By Sarah Fortinsky - 09/15/24

Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), the Republican nominee for vice president, said “of course” former President Trump has a plan to “fix American health care” in a Sunday interview and also outlined several benchmarks of a health care framework.

“He, of course, does have a plan for how to fix American health care, but a lot of it comes down Kristen to deregulating the insurance market so that people can choose a plan that actually makes sense for them,” Vance told NBC News’s Kristen Welker on “Meet the Press” on Sunday when asked for specifics about the former president’s health care plan.

“On the one hand, fix the problems of Obamacare, while, on the other hand, Kristen, making sure that people continue to have good choices,” Vance continued.

Vance’s comments come after Trump was pressed about his health care plan on the debate stage this past week. Despite years of campaigning on a “repeal and replace” message about Obamacare, Trump now indicated he would try to run it “as good as it can be run” unless there’s a better and cheaper option.

“It’s still never going to be great,” Trump said. “If we can come up with a plan that’s going to cost our people, our population less money and be better health care than ObamaCare, then I would absolutely do it. … We could do much better than ObamaCare.”

When pressed by the debate moderators, Trump acknowledged that he doesn’t currently have a plan to replace ObamaCare if it were repealed, saying, “I have concepts of a plan. I’m not president right now.”

Vance touted Trump’s willingness to build on Obamacare, saying in the Sunday interview that “he could have destroyed the program” while he was president. Still, instead, “He chose to build upon a plan even though it came from his Democratic predecessor,” which, he said, “I think it illustrates Donald Trump’s entire approach to governing.”

Trump sought repeatedly during his time in office to overturn ObamaCare. After failing to come up with a better plan, Trump and congressional Republicans sought to repeal the law in 2017, but it failed by a single vote. The law’s popularity subsequently soared, and Democrats won back control of the House chamber by campaigning on preexisting conditions.

Vance, in the Sunday interview, outlined some benchmarks of a plan that he said the Trump administration would support.

“But what President Trump’s health care plan is is actually quite straightforward: You want to make sure the preexisting conditions are covered. You want to make sure that people have access to the doctors that they need. And you also want to implement a deregulatory agenda so that people can choose a healthcare plan that fits them,” Vance said.

“We want to make sure everybody is covered, but the best way to do that is to actually promote some more choice in our healthcare system and not have a one-size-fits-all approach that puts a lot of people into the same insurance pools, into the same risk pool, that actually makes it harder for people to make the right choices for their families,” he added.