President Donald Trump is insisting he has been vital in protecting healthcare protections for people who have preexisting conditions while backing a court challenge that would overturn the Affordable Care Act, including its protections for those conditions.
Trump last week tweeted he was the person who had saved preexisting conditions while "winning the fight to rid you of the expensive, unfair, and very unpopular individual mandate," reports The Hill.
He followed that up with a tweet saying, if Republicans retake control of the House, healthcare that "I have now brought to the best place in many years," will become "the best ever."
However, Trump has often vowed to eliminate Obamacare, including backing a House GOP bill in 2017 which would have softened protections for preexisting conditions.
Trump's tweets might be sparked by ads being purchased by 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Mike Bloomberg to decry the president's "broken promise" on healthcare.
"I think [Trump] is feeling the heat on the issue," said Brad Bannon, a Democratic Party strategist, told The Hill. "He knows he's been on the wrong side of it. He's trying to cover his tracks."
The Trump administraion also supports a multi-state lawsuit seeking to overturn the ACA, notes Larry Levitt, a health policy expert at the Kaiser Family Foundation, including celebrating the House repeal and replace bill during a 2017 Rose Garden ceremony.
But when asked about the Democratic attacks, the Trump campaign's Sarah Matthews said Democrats "want to go far beyond Obamacare and are embracing a government takeover of healthcare that would eliminate private insurance for 180 million Americans."
The campaign also notes Trump has taken several other healthcare actions, such as lowering drug prices and increasing price transparency.
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Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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