Republican vice presidential nominee Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) said in an interview Sunday that former President Trump “certainly” had a plan to improve the U.S. health care system, and outlined some benchmarks for a health care framework.
“Obviously, he has a plan to fix America's health care system, and a lot of it is about deregulating the insurance markets so people can choose a plan that really makes sense for them,” Vance told NBC News' Kristen Welker on “Meet the Press” on Sunday, when asked about details of the former president's health care plans.
“On the one hand, we're going to fix the problems with Obamacare, and on the other hand, Kristen, we're going to make sure people continue to have good choices,” Vance continued.
Vance's comments came after Trump was pressed about his health care reform proposals during a debate last week. Trump, who has long campaigned on “repeal and replace” Obamacare, suggested he would try to keep the program “running as well as possible” unless there was a better, cheaper option.
“It's still not going to be great,” Trump said. “If I could come up with a plan that would give people better health care than Obamacare, at a lower cost, I would absolutely do it. It would be much better than Obamacare.”
When pressed by the debate moderator, Trump acknowledged that he currently had no plan to replace Obamacare if it was repealed, saying, “I have an idea for a plan. I'm not the president now.”
In an interview on Sunday, Vance praised Trump for trying to build on Obamacare, saying he “could have destroyed that system” when he was president. But instead, he “chose to build on the system that his Democratic predecessor created,” he said. “I think this is indicative of Donald Trump's whole attitude toward governing.”
Trump has repeatedly called for the repeal of Obamacare during his presidency. Lacking a better solution, he and Republican lawmakers sought to repeal the law in 2017 but were defeated by just one vote. The law's popularity has since soared, and Democrats have used pre-existing conditions to take back control of the House of Representatives.
In an interview Sunday, Vance outlined some criteria for a plan that the Trump administration would reportedly support.
“But President Trump's health care plan is actually very simple: He wants to make sure pre-existing medical conditions are covered. He wants to make sure people have access to the doctors they need. And he wants to implement a plan to deregulate so people can choose the health care plan that's right for them,” Vance said.
“We want to make sure that everyone has access to insurance, and the best way to do that is to have more choice in our health care system, and a one-size-fits-all approach that puts a lot of people into the same insurance pool, the same risk pool, actually makes it harder for people to make the right choice for their family,” he added.
