Joe Biden on Thursday will warn that President Donald Trump’s attempts to dismantle the Affordable Care Act could have disastrous consequences on Americans who become infected with the coronavirus.
“Most cruelly of all, if Donald Trump has his way, complications from COVID-19 could become a new pre-existing condition,” which insurance plans would no longer cover, Biden, the presumptive 2020 Democratic nominee, will say during a speech Thursday in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, according to prepared remarks provided by his campaign.
“Some survivors will experience lasting health impacts — like lung scarring and heart damage,” Biden said. “And if Donald Trump prevails in court, insurers would be allowed to strip away coverage or jack up premiums simply because of their battle with the coronavirus,” Biden will say, referring to the Trump administration’s ongoing legal effort to invalidate the Affordable Care Act — the signature health care law otherwise known as Obamacare.
“They would live their lives caught in a vise between Donald Trump’s twin legacies: his failure to protect the American people from the coronavirus, and his heartless crusade to take health care protections away from American families,” Biden will say at the Lancaster Recreation Center. Before the speech, Biden is scheduled to meet with local families to discuss health care issues.
Earlier this year, the Trump administration joined a coalition of Republican-led states in asking a federal appeals court to entirely overturn the Affordable Health Care Act — a decision that could leave millions uninsured.
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The speech marks Biden’s latest attack on Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic. Last week, Biden, in a speech outside Philadelphia, accused Trump of “flat-out surrendering” the fight against the disease and urged the president to “wake up” and “get to work.”
Biden, on Thursday, will also hit Trump for commenting at his first campaign rally in months on Saturday that he wanted to slow down testing for the coronavirus.
“Testing unequivocally saves lives, and widespread testing is the key to opening up our economy again,” Biden will say. But Trump, he’ll add, “thinks finding out that more Americans are sick will make him look bad. And that’s what he’s worried about. He’s worried about looking bad.”
Biden’s increased targeting of Pennsylvania makes sense: The state is among the most critical battlegrounds in the 2020 race and is one of the hardest hit by the pandemic.
As of Thursday, the state had the eighth-most confirmed cases of COVID-19 and the fifth-most deaths in the U.S.
The economic toll has been even more striking. Since March 14, at least 2.1 million Pennsylvanians (or nearly 1 in 3 workers in the state) have lost their jobs — the sixth-highest number during that period in the country.
The venue for the speech, however, is surprising. While health care is a dominant industry in Lancaster, Trump handily carried the county in 2016, beating Hillary Clinton by nearly 20 percentage points. Barack Obama also lost the county by double digits in both 2008 and 2012.
