Fact Check: Walz Falsely Claims Trump Won’t Cover Pre-existing Conditions

CLAIM: Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) claimed that former President Donald Trump would cancel health coverage for pre-existing conditions.

VERDICT: FALSE. Trump wants to cover pre-existing conditions. This is a false claim that has been fact-checked before.

Walz claimed at the vice presidential debate on CBS News on Tuesday night that Trump would cancel coverage for pre-existing health conditions. He cited Trump’s support for repealing Obamacare.

Breitbart News fact-checked this claim in 2020:

In his first address to Congress in 2017, Trump declared that his “first” principle in repealing and replacing Obamacare would be that “we should ensure that Americans with preexisting conditions have access to coverage.” Later that year, Republicans in the House of Representatives passed a Trump-backed bill to repeal and replace Obamacare, the American Health Care Act (AHCA), which included additional spending to protect Americans with pre-existing health conditions.

In 2019, Trump again promised in the State of the Union address “to protect patients with pre-existing conditions.” And he repeated that promise again earlier this month in a speech in Toledo, Ohio. The president backs a court challenge to the existing Obamacare system because he believes it will create political momentum for a better Republican alternative.

Some Republicans have also introduced legislation to protect pre-existing conditions in the event that the courts throw out Obamacare — which many conservatives believe was unconstitutional on the day it was signed into law. Given support from his party for extending such coverage, and his own promises, there is no way [CNN debate moderator] Abby Phillip’s contention can be stated as fact.

Walz also, bizarrely, defended the individual mandate requirement that every person buy health insurance or be fined — a requirement that Obamacare had trouble enforcing, and which was repealed by Congress under Trump in 2017.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of The Agenda: What Trump Should Do in His First 100 Days, available for pre-order on Amazon. He is also the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.