Details from the DNC on the health care battles ahead

WASHINGTON – Democrats were unclear this week about what their health options are: protecting abortion rights, and making America feel good again.

The four-day event in Chicago produced an empowered party charged with fighting for reproductive rights, lower drug costs, health care freedom — and mental health. Former President Bill Clinton called Harris “a happy president.” Oprah Winfrey said Harris-Walz is the “normal” ticket and asked voters to “choose happiness.” First Lady Michelle Obama told the cheering crowd that “Hope is coming back.”

Vice President Kamala Harris took the stage Thursday night with a similar tone. “Through this election, our nation has an important, momentary opportunity to move beyond the bitter wars, doubts and divisions of the past. An opportunity to create a new way forward. Not members of one party or one party, but as Americans.”

But while aspects of the Democratic convention — including a phone call featuring Lil Jon — differed significantly from last month’s Republican convention, speakers also wasted no time attacking President Trump’s health goals. .

“They’re going to repeal the Affordable Care Act. They will receive Social Security and Medicare. And they’re going to ban abortion across this country, with or without Congress,” Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, a Harris ally, said Wednesday.

A large bound copy of Project 2025, the blueprint for the second Trump administration by the conservative think tank Heritage Foundation, was circulated repeatedly and referenced in many speeches.

Trump himself has distanced himself from the project and called it “very extreme.” Harris campaigners — and the vice president himself on Thursday — point out that many of the project’s authors worked in the first Trump administration.

The 900-page Project 2025 was “written by his closest advisers, and its essence is to return our country to the past,” Harris said. But America, let’s not go back.

While the Trump campaign released seven emails during and immediately after his speech attacking Harris’ record on the border, the economy and tax policy, they did not dispute his health claims. good on Thursday night.

But that doesn’t mean they won’t be around soon. Here are the key health headlines from the DNC and how the Trump campaign is responding.

Reproductive rights

So far, the main topic of the week has been Harris’ plan to reinstate Roe v. Wade and codified it into law, reducing restrictions in 25 states since the Supreme Court overturned state protections for abortion.

“We don’t know how we got here. Donald Trump has appointed members of the United States Supreme Court to take away the freedom to have children, and now he’s bragging about it,” Harris said.

Trump actually bragged about creating a court with three successful nominations, but he also asserted that the majority of Americans, regardless of political party, wanted to see Roe overturned. That doesn’t work in elections; most voters say they oppose the 2022 court decision.

Unlike the Republican convention, nearly every major DNC speaker brought up abortion, framing it as an issue of individual liberty. Monday night’s program featured three women who explained how abortion restrictions put their lives at risk or, in the case of Hadley Duvall’s story, would create new barriers for abused children. Duvall recounted her experience of having a miscarriage after being sexually abused by her stepfather.

Trump has said he wants to leave abortion laws up to the states and that he supports exceptions in the case of rape, sexual relations with relatives or danger to the life of the pregnant woman. But in reality, medical experts say it’s difficult to know when someone qualifies for those exceptions or if a doctor can receive a penalty for providing care.

Democrats did not stop abortion rights, repeatedly referring to Project 2025 to paint a picture of a second Trump administration that would cut back on contraception and fertility treatment.

“On page 562, it says Donald Trump could use a law that hasn’t been seen since the 1800s to ban single-sex abortions in all 50 states, even imprisoning doctors,” Colorado Governor Jared Polis told the agents. “On page 486, it lays down the restrictions on conception. Page 450 threatens access to IVF on page 455, Project 2025. It says states must report abortions to the Trump administration.

But Republican criticism of Democrats’ reproductive rights messaging continues. Trump’s running mate JD Vance, an Ohio senator, accused Walz of lying about his family’s fertility journey when he talked about his wife undergoing in vitro fertilization to conceive their children. In fact, Gwen Walz underwent intrauterine insemination, a procedure that involves inserting sperm into the uterus through a catheter.

It’s weird to lie, right? There is nothing wrong with having a baby through IVF or not having a baby through IVF. Like, why are you lying about it?” Vance told reporters in Milwaukee recently.

Although both are common methods of reproduction, IUI has not yet faced the same threats as IVF because it does not involve freezing and destroying the embryos. For example, an Alabama court ruling that wrongly created a fetus made IVF illegal in the state earlier this year, a move the legislature quickly reversed.

The Harris campaign, along with Gwen Walz, later clarified that she had accepted IUI and said they used IVF as an umbrella. In his big acceptance speech for the vice presidential nomination on Wednesday night, Tim Walz said, “We had access to fertility treatment.”

This issue is not likely to end anytime soon. Vance and other Republicans are sticking to Tim Walz’s words to argue that the governor is dishonest and that Democrats are scared.

“Is there anything that guy doesn’t lie about?” National Republican Senatorial Committee spokesman Mike Berg wrote in X.

Health care costs

Harris, President Biden and other Democrats have also encouraged the administration to lower drug prices by negotiating Medicare and spending cuts for seniors. The pride was timely, as the Biden administration released federally negotiated prices for the first batch of drugs last week.

Biden also presented a historically low uninsured rate as ACA marketplace enrollment increased. But while the US uninsured rate fell to a record low in 2023, the rate rose earlier this year. Democrats are also fighting to keep market subsidies that keep subscriber rates low; those may expire at the end of next year.

On Thursday, the vice president again pointed to Trump’s record. “Let’s not go back to when Donald Trump tried to cut Social Security and Medicare. Let’s not go back to when he tried to get rid of the Affordable Care Act, when insurance companies could deny people with pre-existing conditions,”

Trump said he would not “cut a penny” from Medicare or Social Security during his second term as president. He recently told a rally in North Carolina, “I’m going to keep the Affordable Care Act unless we can do something better.”

Yet on the campaign trail, Trump has referred to Medicare negotiations as “socialist” price controls and promised to lower drug costs himself, though he has yet to come up with an alternative plan. He also warned this week that under Harris, “health insurance laws are gone,” and Harris will create a “communist” system where everyone gets health care under a public option. .

This is a ripe attack spot for Republicans, as Harris endorsed Medicare for All during the 2020 campaign and co-sponsored the bill with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) during his time as a senator, but has since backtracked. Plan. Public opinion polls suggest voters are divided on the issue; while many believe that health care is the responsibility of the federal government, almost half do not want to lose their private insurance plans, according to Gallup.

Yet Harris’s center-left position may now alienate some progressive voters, a position Trump’s opponents are eager to exploit.

“Kamala Harris’ advocates are again alleging that she has stepped down from her position — this time saying she no longer supports Medicare for All,” campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt told CNN.

Covid report

Democrats took this opportunity to undermine Trump’s response to the coronavirus pandemic, a topic that is not far from the minds of many patients but whose performance remains a hot debate between the two campaigns.

“As schools closed and morgues filled with corpses, Donald Trump downplayed the virus,” Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.) said Monday. He told us that we had bleached our bodies. He sold conspiracy theories across the country. ”

The bleach statement goes back to Trump’s suggestion during an April 2020 press conference that Trump insisted, a day later, was “full”. He had said during the interview that “we [could] hit the body with…a very strong light,” or research using a disinfectant “by injection or cleaning.”

The response to Covid-19 is a complex field for both campaigns. Under Trump, Operation Warp Speed ​​worked with pharmaceutical companies to develop vaccines in record time for the virus. The Biden administration dealt with the magnitude of the vaccine outbreak and reduced emergency measures.

Yet Biden and Trump have repeatedly attacked each other’s accounts. Trump has accused Democrats of panic and said the recession is slowing the economy and vaccine and mask requirements are infringing on human liberties.

Biden and speakers at the DNC, on the other hand, said that Trump promoted lies and conspiracy theories about Covid, and underestimated the danger of the virus – and its consequences. While both parties are eager to get past the pandemic, the Harris campaign says Biden is steering the economy out of the coronavirus crisis, a claim Trump has slammed.

Biden took up that mantle on Monday, saying, “Covid no longer controls our lives. We’ve gone from an economic crisis to the strongest economy in the entire world. Record 16 million new jobs.”

Mr. Trump this week accused the Biden administration of taking those job numbers. The latest issue shows that while the epidemic may be over, its role in the campaign rhetoric is not.