The battles are now sprawling across virtually every aspect of the federal role in health care — including the regulation of childhood vaccines, funding for basic medical research, and the historic reductions in Medicaid coverage approved as part of the GOP’s tax and spending reconciliation bill last summer. With the law touching so many voters, Trump through the 2024 campaign downplayed his focus on the ACA, insisting, “I would only change it if we come up with something that’s better and less expensive.” Once Trump returned to the White House, Congressional Republicans did not propose a full-scale repeal of the ACA and Trump, more explicitly than in the campaign, pledged not to cut Medicaid. These were rooted in the second key event shaping Trump’s health agenda: the conservative backlash against the government response to the Covid-19 epidemic and the growing skepticism about vaccines in particular, and federal scientific agencies in general, among broad segments of the right.
Author: Ronald Brownstein
Published at: 2025-09-28 10:08:11
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