Nevada Democratic Party: Ahead of First Presidential Debate, Trump, Republicans Still Pulling Out All Stops to Dismantle ACA

LAS VEGAS, Nevada, Sept. 29 -- The Nevada Democratic Party issued the following news release on Sept. 28:

Ahead of the first presidential debate tomorrow, Trump and Republicans are still pulling out all the stops to dismantle the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and rip away health care coverage from working families across Nevada even in the midst of a global pandemic. With the Supreme Court set to hear Trump's attempt to tear down the ACA just one week after Election Day, the stakes are higher than ever for Nevadans.

As a candidate in 2016, Trump repeatedly pledged to deliver better, more affordable health care coverage to Nevada families.

* Trump: "We're going to have health care that is so good and so much less expensive." [Trump Campaign Rally, Las Vegas NV, 10/30/16]

* Trump: "You're gonna end up with great health care for a fraction of the price and that's gonna take place immediately after we go in, okay, immediately. Fast, quick." [Trump Campaign Rally, Las Vegas NV, 2/22/16]

* Trump: "We're going to win with health care. We're going to knock out Obamacare. We're going to come up something so much better, so much less expensive." [Trump Campaign Rally, Sparks NV, 2/23/16]

In reality, Trump has overseen a rise in uninsured Nevadans, all while attempting to sabotage the ACA over and over again with no replacement plan in sight -- even in the middle of a once-in-a-century public health crisis.

* Between 2016 and 2019, the number of uninsured Nevadans rose by 18,000.

* In 2018, Nevada's uninsured rate sat at 11% -- a dramatic improvement from 23.5% before the ACA was enacted, but still the seventh highest uninsured rate in the country.

* Despite the coronavirus crisis, Trump has continued his reckless effort to terminate the ACA without a replacement plan in place.

* If Trump's legal assault on the ACA is successful, 309,000 Nevadans could lose their coverage in the middle of a pandemic -- right when they need it the most.

Trump's lawsuit to overturn the ACA threatens to end the Medicaid expansion program that extended coverage to hundreds of thousands of Nevadans even as more unemployed Americans turn to it to gain subsidized health insurance.

* If the ACA is overturned, more than 209,000 Nevadans who benefitted from the law's Medicaid expansion program would see their health care coverage disappear.

* On top of that, many Americans left unemployed during the pandemic were able to turn to the ACA's Medicaid expansion program to gain subsidized health insurance. The number of Nevadans on Medicaid has swelled from fewer than 644,000 in February to approximately 731,000 in August. Of those new enrollees, approximately 4 in 10 benefit from the ACA's Medicaid expansion -- and each of them are at risk of losing their coverage if Trump's lawsuit is successful.

At the crux of Trump and Republicans' assault on health care is their attack on the ACA's critical protections for patients with pre-existing conditions.

* If it hadn't been for Nevada Democrats' work to make these protections for people with pre-existing conditions permanent last year, as many as 1.15 million Nevadans could have faced denial of coverage by insurers.

* The next Justice who goes on the Court will decide whether or not working families will still have protections for pre-existing conditions at a time when health complications from COVID-19 could become the next deniable pre-existing condition.