Vance Lets Slip: He and Trump Are Coming For Your Health Care

It's not just Project 2025 or Trump's failed ACA repeal. Vance accidentally admitted the NEW plan is to screw over people with pre-existing conditions specifically.

(Photo by Stephen Maturen/Getty Images)

Democrats are always hoping for a break that’ll thrust kitchen-table issues like health care into the headlines. Suddenly they have two to work with.

Donald Trump provided them the first one at last week’s presidential debate, when he admitted, nine years after he began trying to dismantle the Affordable Care Act, that he only has “concepts of a plan” to replace a law that tens of millions of Americans depend upon for their health insurance.

Now comes another.

Asked Sunday on Meet the Press to elaborate on Trump’s health care “concepts,” his running mate JD Vance explained that the Trump health-care agenda is to wreck protections for pre-existing conditions (while lying about it).

“President Trump's health care plan is actually quite straightforward,” Vance said.

You want to make sure that preexisting coverage – conditions are covered, you want to make sure that people have access to the doctors that they need, and you also want to implement some deregulatory agenda so that people can choose a health care plan that fits them. Think about it: a young American doesn't have the same health care needs as a 65-year-old American. A 65-year-old American in good health has much different health care needs than a 65-year-old American with a chronic condition. And we want to make sure everybody is covered. But the best way to do that is to actually promote some more choice in our health care 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 pools, that actually makes it harder for people to make the right choices for their families.

The text of the quote doesn’t include a revelatory gaffe like “concepts of a plan,” but it’s actually far more damning, because Vance dared to get specific, and the specifics of Republican health policy remain toxic and cruel.

Here’s how Vance gave away the game: