At Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden’s town hall Thursday, he repeated a claim about people with preexisting conditions and coverage.
Our partners at FactCheck.org call it misleading.
“One hundred million people with preexisting conditions like your mom would not have to pay more for their insurance under now, but guess what happens if in fact he wins,” Biden said.
But the 100 million figure is an estimate for the number of Americans — outside of Medicare and Medicaid — who have preexisting conditions.
Without the Affordable Care Act, those people would lose the preexisting condition protections.
But not all of them would lose all of their coverage. That’s a much smaller amount, 6% (6 million people), who only get insurance from the individual market.
In another issue regarding health, the former vice president blamed President Donald Trump on Thursday for downplaying COVID-19.
“Imagine, had he at the State of the Union stood up and said — when back in January, I wrote an article for USA Today saying, ‘We’ve got a pandemic. We’ve got a real problem.’
“Imagine if he had said something,” Biden said. “How many more people would be alive?”
Technically in that op-ed, Biden spoke of the possibility of a pandemic.
And the president did mention the coronavirus in his State of the Union.
“We are coordinating with the Chinese government and working closely together on the coronavirus outbreak in China,” Trump said. “My administration will take all necessary steps to safeguard our citizens from this threat.”