If President Trump is known for one thing, it’s stretching the truth (also known as lying), and his health care record is no exception. Trump’s record is defined by one act of sabotage after another but he hopes Americans believe his outrageous lies like how he “saved” protections for pre-existing conditions. In reality, Trump’s agenda has been all about ripping health care away and putting insurance and drug companies back in charge to hike costs on Americans. From trying to eliminate protections for pre-existing conditions, to gutting funding for Medicaid and his allegiance to drug companies over patients, here are the top five lies about health care that you will hear from Donald Trump at Thursday’s debate:
- LIE: Trump Lowered Drug Prices Trump will claim that, “Low INSULIN PRICING was gotten for millions of Americans by me, and the Trump Administration, not by Crooked Joe Biden” or that he “lowered drug costs by “80 or 90 percent” and that insulin was “as cheap as water.”
REALITY: Trump had four years to take action on drug prices, but instead, he did nothing and now he’ll lie and say anything to cover up his failures. In reality, drug prices soared under Trump. During his first year in office, the list prices of 20 of the top 25 drugs covered by Medicare Part D increased between three and nine times the rate of inflation, according to KFF. AARP found that annual drug costs for the drugs most commonly used by seniors rose 5.8 percent in 2018, more than twice the rate of inflation. Likewise, drug prices increased an average of 21 percent in 2019 and rose faster than inflation in 2020. Further, Trump put profits over people and gave billions in tax breaks to drug and health insurance companies and executives, signing a $1.5 trillion tax bill disproportionately benefiting the wealthy and reducing the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 21 percent. - LIE: Trump has a “phenomenal” health care plan. Trump will say that he’s going to be introducing a “terrific,” “phenomenal” and “fantastic” new health care plan to replace the Affordable Care Act – and it will be ready in “two weeks.”
REALITY: Trump has been promising this “phenomenal” new health plan in “two weeks” for nearly eight years now, but his record on ripping away Americans’ health care is clear. Census data revealed the uninsured rate rose during Trump’s tenure for the first time since the implementation of the Affordable Care Act. The rate increased from 7.9 percent in 2017 to 8.5 percent in 2018, or by approximately 2 million people. During his first term, Trump notoriously tried and failed multiple times to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA). All of the repeal bills that went through Congress would have caused millions of Americans to lose their health coverage and raised premiums for millions more. Trump’s repeal efforts would have ended Medicaid as we know it, putting the health care of children, seniors, working families, and people with disabilities at risk. During his 2024 campaign Trump has repeatedly reignited his calls to “terminate” the Affordable Care Act, which he claims is a “disaster,” and his MAGA allies in Congress are seeking to dismantle the Inflation Reduction Act and its provisions making prescription drugs and health care premiums more affordable for tens of millions of Americans. - LIE: Trump will protect Medicaid. For years Trump has lied and promised that he will “protect your Medicare and your Medicaid.”
REALITY: Under Trump’s first term, more than one million children lost Medicaid coverage between 2017 and 2019. A second Trump term will see a renewed war on Medicaid laid out in the “Project 2025” agenda released by Trump’s allies at the Heritage Foundation, which includes onerous paperwork requirements and block grants that would force radical cuts to Medicaid. These tried and failed policies are designed to throw people off of their coverage. Between encouraging states to impose red tape and paperwork requirements masquerading as work requirements, the first Trump administration worked tirelessly to dismantle Medicaid. After Arkansas imposed the nation’s first so-called “work requirements” program, more than 18,000 residents lost Medicaid coverage. Although state efforts were blocked by a federal judge several times, the Trump administration fought relentlessly to impose work reporting requirements in Medicaid and red state governors are already preparing draconian cuts and onerous requirements for Medicaid recipients should Trump take office again. - LIE: Trump will never cut a single penny from Medicare. Trump has vowed dozens of times never to cut Medicare and last year posted a video claiming that, “Under no circumstances should Republicans vote to cut a single penny from Medicare or Social Security.”
REALITY: Trump’s budgets included cuts to Medicare and Social Security every single year that he was in office and as recently as March of 2024 he proposed “entitlements” reform that could put the health and financial security of millions of American seniors at risk. For example, Trump’s proposed federal budget in 2019 alone would have cut funding for Medicare by more than $800 billion and repealed the ACA. - LIE: Everyone is happy with overturning Roe v. Wade and the GOP is the “party of fertilization.” Trump will tie himself in knots on abortion rights and reproductive care, claiming that “all legal scholars, both sides” wanted Roe v. Wade overturned and now “we have abortion where everybody wanted it from a legal standpoint.” He’ll lie and say that abortion is “not that big of an issue” and even that the GOP is the “party of fertilization.”REALITY: Donald Trump is responsible for the repeal of Roe v. Wade and the devastating consequences for reproductive health. Trump boasts that his appointees to the Supreme Court “broke Roe v. Wade” and the consequences for women’s health have been catastrophic, from cruel and archaic abortion bans to devastating uncertainty about access to IVF and other reproductive care. A second term would see more extreme judicial appointments and an all out push to use the Comstock Act to create a de facto national ban on abortions and sharply limit access to medications like mifepristone.