'Disingenuous dance': Experts knock down Vance boast as Trump failure — and Obama victory
Sen. J.D. Vance's claims that his family received private health insurance because of Donald Trump is technically true — but only because the former president failed, according to experts interviewed by the Washington Post.
Vance's mother's ability to purchase private health insurance amid addiction recovery on the Affordable Care Act marketplace reflects the victory of another former president — Barack Obama — and Trump's inability to knock it down, experts told the Post Saturday.
“If any Vance family members transitioned to the marketplace because they earned out of Medicaid," Andrew Sprung, an independent health analyst, told the Post, "they should be grateful that Trump and Republicans in Congress failed to repeal and replace the marketplace with an alternative that would have provided far less affordable coverage."
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The Post reported a common trend among experts who believe Vance's narrative reflects a fundamental fallacy.
"In Vance’s telling, his family members’ experience reflects Trump’s stewardship of the nation’s health-care markets — a perspective shared by some conservatives," the Post reported.
"But to many health policy experts, Vance’s story reveals something else: the benefits of “Obamacare,” even to its critics, and the audacity of Trump’s attempts to take credit for the work of President Barack Obama and Democrats, who crafted and defended the Affordable Care Act at great political cost."
Daniel Skinner, an Ohio University health professor and Vance critic, called Trump's running mate's comments “a delicate if disingenuous dance," according to the Post.
“Vance knows that the ACA is now pretty popular," said Skinner, "despite a good portion of Trump’s MAGA base insisting that he get behind repealing it again.”
Amy Rohling McGee, president of the nonpartisan Health Policy Institute of Ohio, told the Washington Post she was unable to identify any “unilateral actions” the Trump administration took to improve Obamacare.
Obama himself has weighed on the Republican Party narrative that they deserve credit for the popular health care system.
"The nerve," Obama said of Vance on Thursday, "to say Donald Trump salvaged the Affordable Care Act.”