Ron DeSantis is taking aim at the Affordable Care Act again, President Barack Obama’s landmark health care bill that brought insurance to millions of Americans. While speaking to Kristen Welker on “Meet the Press” Sunday, DeSantis said his campaign will soon roll out a plan to “replace and supersede” Obamacare with “a totally different health care plan.”
When asked to define what he meant by “supersede,” DeSantis said of Obamacare enrollees, “If they have an exchange plan, we’ll have a plan that will offer them coverage” and “the coverage will be different and better, but they’re still going to be able to be covered.”
DeSantis was also pressed to make it “very clear” if he plans to keep Obamacare in place or completely replace it, to which he answered, “This will be– this will be replacing Obamacare.”
Welker asked DeSantis to explain “specifically” what his new plan would be, a request the Floridian declined to fulfill. He said, “Well, we’re going to be working on– probably in the spring we’ll roll out a big proposal. I’ve got a lot of input that’s been coming in from a lot of good people around the country. But we will definitely be addressing insurance, we’ll definitely be addressing big government, and we will be addressing Big Pharma.”
“You know, we pay more for drugs in this country than anybody else in the world,” DeSantis continued. “I’d like to see some equity across these developed countries, so that our consumers are getting relief. Obamacare promised that; it didn’t deliver. So, we’re going to do something that actually works.”
DeSantis’ health care efforts in his home state of Florida haven’t exactly been praised. He refused to allow Medicaid expansion in the state after Obamacare passed, which resulted in 2.5 million people in Florida living without health insurance. As a member of Congress, DeSantis attempted to repeal Obamacare six times.
This past May, DeSantis released what his office described as “the strongest legislation in the nation for medical freedom,” which included both anti-mask and anti-vaccination policies. It was a set of four pieces of legislation designed to “protect Floridians from medical mandates, empower doctors, and prohibit dangerous gain-of-function research.” The legislation “safeguards residents’ freedom by ensuring no patient is forced by a business, school, or government entity to undergo testing, wear a mask, or be vaccinated for COVID-19.”
DeSantis said at the time, “Our early actions during the pandemic protected Floridians and their freedoms. We protected the rights of Floridians to make decisions for themselves and their children and rejected COVID theater, narratives, and hysteria in favor of truth and data. These expanded protections will help ensure that medical authoritarianism does not take root in Florida.”
Watch Ron DeSantis on “Meet the Press” in the video above.
