Trump says he’ll sign executive order on covering preexisting conditions

• President Donald Trump said that in the next two weeks he’d be working on an executive order to require health insurance companies to cover those with preexisting conditions.
• This requirement — that insurers cover those with pre-existing conditions — is already law, and it has been since the 2010 passage of the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare.
• Trump, since taking office in 2017, has sought to repeal or undermine President Barack Obama’s signature law.
• In June of this year, the Justice Department asked the US Supreme Court to try to overturn the law.
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At a last-minute press conference held in the ballroom of his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, on Friday night, President Donald Trump said that in the next two weeks he’d be working on an executive order to require health insurance companies to cover those with preexisting conditions.

This requirement — that insurers cover those with pre-existing conditions — is already law, and it has been since the 2010 passage of the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare.

Trump, since taking office in 2017, has sought to repeal or undermine President Barack Obama’s signature law. During the summer of 2017, Congress failed to repeal the entirety of the law. However, the passage of the GOP tax cut bill at the end of 2017 eliminated the tax penalty for the individual mandate, which said that everyone must have insurance coverage or pay a penalty. With the tax penalty gone, 19 states led by Texas sued to say the law was unconstitutional without it.

The Trump administration backs this suit, and in June of this year, the Justice Department asked the US Supreme Court to try to overturn the law.

If the ACA were overturned, around 20 million people would lose their health insurance coverage, and popular aspects of the law, like mandating that insurance companies cover to those with preexisting conditions, would be overruled.

“Over the next two weeks I’ll be pursuing a major executive order requiring health insurance companies to cover all preexisting conditions for all customers,” Trump said on Friday night.

The Republican president, who is trailing Democratic candidate Joe Biden ahead of the November elections, gave no details about his proposed healthcare plan.

Trump has criticized the cost and coverage under Obamacare and has been promising since his 2016 campaign to replace it with a better plan.

Biden has condemned Trump for fighting to gut Obamacare, accusing him of threatening healthcare protections for millions of Americans in the midst of a raging pandemic.

(Reporting by Jeff Mason; Writing by Mohammad Zargham; Editing by Leslie Adler and Sandra Maler)