Rob Davidson has practiced medicine in a rural Michigan county for over two decades. The Affordable Care Act (ACA) has improved the lives of many of his patients — and millions more around the country — but Trump has repeatedly promised to repeal it.
Individual holdout
In late 2023, Trump announced he was “seriously looking into alternatives” to the ACA. He called his failure to repeal it during his first term a “low point for the Republican Party.”
Unpopular attempt
In 2017, Republican Senator John McCain delivered a dramatic thumbs-down vote, which effectively killed Trump’s attempt to undo the ACA. “Trump appears to still be seething” about this decision, Davidson suggested.
Repeated promises
“I don’t want to terminate Obamacare,” Trump posted on Truth Social, his social media platform, in November 2023. “I want to REPLACE IT with MUCH BETTER HEALTHCARE. Obamacare Sucks!!!”
No alternative
“For all their bluster, Trump and his acolytes had — and still have — no real alternative to the ACA,” Davidson pointed out. “The former president has been promising for years that he could create a better health care plan to replace Obamacare, and has yet to deliver.”
Revolutionary change
Many Americans take the coverage granted by Obamacare “for granted,” Davidson argued. However, he intimately knows the revolutionary change that it caused.
Dire situation
“In the rural county in Michigan where I’ve practiced medicine for more than 20 years,” Davidson explained, “many of the patients I see are barely getting by financially. The most impoverished among them used to scrimp to pay for preventative care visits at the doctor’s office.”
Avoidable expenses
“They would struggle to pay for the prescription drugs they needed for even common and treatable ailments,” Davidson continued. “If the cost of an inhaler or insulin did not fit their budget that month, they might end up in the emergency room with completely preventable complications. Those same cash-strapped patients would often find themselves saddled with a massive bill because of that visit to the ER.”
Key change
One of the ACA’s key provisions was forbidding insurance companies from denying people coverage based on pre-existing conditions. Some 135 million Americans have such conditions, and 54 million of them have conditions that would make them uninsurable were the ACA repealed.
Dark fear
“Of all the alarming changes former President Donald Trump has threatened if he returns to America’s highest office,” Davidson wrote, “none scares me more than his pledge to do away with Obamacare.”
Terrible consequences
Removing the ACA “would have potentially devastating consequences,” Davidson warned. ”Undoing the ACA would set American health care back a generation or more and make our shared goal of a more affordable, more accessible, and more patient-centered health care system even less attainable.”
Many examples
Davidson gave several examples of patients, both hypothetical and ones he has treated, whose lives would be worsened or even endangered by a repeal of the ACA. He described treating one patient, for example, who avoided seeking treatment for chest pain due to a lack of insurance.
Devastating outcomes
By the time the patient finally sought treatment, he was left with just one-third of his normal coronary function. This was before the ACA, which could have enabled him to have health insurance that might have let him seek earlier treatment, which in turn could have saved his heart.
Many affected
“With the ACA,” Davidson explained, “I see patients every day in similarly dire health situations who are able to get the treatment they need.” Trump’s promised repeal could undo all of that.
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