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October 23, 2020 at 05:39 AM
Donald Trump and Joe Biden both said Thursday that they’d want to keep commercial health insurance around.
Trump, the Republican nominee, said he’d still prefer to “terminate Obamacare” and “come up with a brand new, beautiful health care.”
Biden, the Democratic nominee, said any suggestions that he wants to eliminate commercial health insurance, and to move to the kind of government-run single-payer health finance system proposed by Sen. Bernie Sanders, are incorrect.
“The reason why I had such a fight with 20 candidates for the nomination was that I support private insurance,” Biden said.
Resources
- A C-SPAN recording of the debate, with a transcript search tool, is available here.
- The Rev.com debate transcript is available here.
- An article about Democratic senators who could determine what health bills get through the Senate in the next Congress is available here.
Trump and Biden talked about health policy in Nashville, Tennessee, at the second 2020 presidential debate.
Biden also talked about his support for keeping commercial health insurance around Sept. 29, during the first debate.
Trump’s Views
Trump said the country needs to make sure that the 180 million people who have employer-sponsored health coverage keep their plans.
“These are people that love their health care,” Trump said.
Trump said that his administration has already terminated the Affordable Care Act individual mandate — the provision that required many people to have a minimum level of health coverage or else pay a penalty.
“That is the worst part of Obamacare,” Trump said. “The individual mandate, where you have to pay a fortune for the privilege of not having to pay for bad health insurance. I terminated it. It’s gone. Now, it’s in court, because Obamacare is no good. But then I made a decision, run it as well as you can… I could have gone the other route and made everybody very unhappy.”
At this point, Trump said, premiums are down.
But “here’s the problem,” Trump said. “No matter how well you run it, it’s no good. What we’d like to do is terminate it…. But, it no longer is Obamacare, because, without the individual mandate, it’s much different.”
Biden’s Views
When Biden talked about health policy, he emphasized that his public option proposal would create a government-run alternative to private insurance for low-income people.
