Former Vice President Joe Biden plans to disrupt efforts by the Trump administration to scrap the Affordable Care Act on Thursday when the coronavirus overwhelms states that have rushed to reopen their economies.
In the state of Pennsylvania, the presumptive Democratic presidential candidate will say that removing the Obama administration’s landmark health care law would be an additional burden on Americans recovering from Covid-19.
The comments will come when the Trump administration faces a deadline to file a legal report in support of a lawsuit that challenges Obamacare’s constitutionality.
Democrats took advantage of opposition to Republican attempts to repeal Obamacare to gain control of the House in 2018, and planned to roll out the same strategy this year even before the pandemic swept across the country. Now, Biden is linking the possible loss of health insurance for millions to Trump’s inability to contain the virus, arguing that it would worsen an already inadequate federal response.
“They would live their lives caught in a vise among Donald Trump’s twin legacies: his inability to protect the American people from the coronavirus and his ruthless crusade to remove the health protections of American families,” Biden will say of Covid patients. -19. who could lose coverage if Obamacare is declared unconstitutional and complications of the pandemic are classified as a pre-existing condition. His campaign published excerpts from speeches before comments.
Democratic presidential candidate and former Vice President Joe Biden speaks at a campaign event dedicated to the reopening of the American economy during the coronavirus disease pandemic (COVID-19) in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on June 11, 2020 .
Bastiaan Slabbers | Reuters
The pandemic has highlighted deep problems in the U.S. healthcare system, even with Obama’s care virtually intact. Like most Americans with health insurance through their employers, the widespread loss of jobs after states imposed public health restrictions left millions in danger of losing coverage during the outbreak.
Proponents of single-payer insurance have cited the outages as they push for a government-run system to cover all Americans. While Biden’s health care plan would expand coverage through a public option similar to Medicare, it would not completely dismantle the private insurance system, as would the “Medicare for All” proposal of former Democratic presidential rival Bernie Sanders. .
Covid-19 has also brought racial disparities in healthcare to the fore. While African Americans account for 13% of the U.S. population, they have accounted for 21% of coronavirus deaths when race is known, according to the COVID Racial Data Tracker.
A Trump campaign spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Biden’s planned comments.
Biden planned to meet Thursday with families who have benefited from the Affordable Care Act in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Trump narrowly won the state in the 2016 election, and losing him this year would be a blow to his re-election hopes.
The Democratic presidential hopeful has made Trump’s response to the coronavirus a centerpiece of his campaign. He has repeatedly argued that the president was unprepared to face the pandemic, and plans to attack Trump for recently suggesting that he wants to reduce the testing rate to keep the number of positive tests low.
“He’s worried about looking bad,” Biden will say.
The United States has recorded about 2.4 million Covid-19 cases and 122,000 deaths, easily more than any other country, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.
Cases and hospitalization in states like Texas and Arizona have increased in recent days. On Thursday, Texas Governor Greg Abbott announced that the state would pause its reopening plans as the pandemic pushes the hospital’s capacity to its limits in some parts of the state.
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