Inside The Trump-Affiliated Outfit Trying to Repeal The Affordable Care Act

In May, an ominous tweet from the former governor of Louisiana, Bobby Jindal, popped up on X, previously known as Twitter.  

“President Trump is right,” Jindal announced. “Obamacare failed. Healthcare costs have exploded. Premiums are up. Deductibles are up. Spending is through the roof. Let’s FIX IT.”

Jindal, the chair of the Center for a Healthy America, an arm of the America First Policy Institute, established in 2021 to promote former president Donald Trump’s public policy agenda, is no fan of Obamacare. The group’s leadership includes its founder, president and CEO, Brooke Rollins, who was acting director of Trump’s Domestic Policy Council; vice chair Larry Kudlow, who was director of the National Economic Council under Trump; and Trump’s daughter Ivanka, who is listed as an “adviser.” The group is often called a “White House in waiting.”   

Its vision document lists job “creation and low unemployment,” and expanding affordable housing, reducing federal bureaucracy, cracking down on crime and illegal immigration, passing congressional term limits and ending foreign wars and reliance on China. 

Jindal’s tweet in May was no one-off. Over the past year, he has penned several posts on the America First Policy Institute’s website attacking Obamacare, suggesting that the Affordable Care Act is a likely candidate for the chopping block in a new Trump administration, even though some 45 million Americans are now enrolled in health care arrangements related to the Affordable Care Act, the highest total on record.

In February Jindal offered five steps toward a fresh approach to health care reform. He argued that giving patients direct control over the ACA subsidy “they qualify for” would “let them use it to buy the care and coverage that works best for them.” Such a plan, he argued, would lead to lower prices, lower demand, and lower premiums. If such subsidies turned out to be insufficient, however, there would be a real risk people could become uninsured OR underinsured. 

At the end of April, the Center for a Healthy America offered another commentary denigrating the Affordable Care Act, this one titled “The Results Are In: Obamacare Has Failed,” and announcing that, “It’s time to fix Obamacare. At AFPI, we believe doctors and patients should be in control in order to have a healthy America.”  

Jindal might want to look at the statistics, which show that the Affordable Care Act has actually helped thousands of people in his own state. Last year Louisiana had the second largest year-over-year increase in Obamacare signups. 

It’s a state where the health stats are nothing to brag about. According to the Louisiana Health Department, the state ranks 42nd in the diagnosis of cardiovascular disease, 47th in the number of obese adults, and 46th in the percentage of adults with diabetes. 

Making it easier to buy and qualify for health insurance was a major goal of Obamacare. However, last December Jindal, whose commentaries sometimes appear on Fox News, offered “4 Ways to Repeal Obamacare,” urging Republicans “to pursue a radical incrementalism strategy to empower patients and their providers rather than government bureaucrats” by enacting “popular policies that repeal important portions of Obamacare while also enacting conservative reforms that make additional reforms likely.” That means, of course, that consumers would then be able to buy so-called junk insurance, the kind that is no longer allowed on the market. 

At the end of June, in a piece entitled “Obamacare isn’t affordable healthcare. Republicans should put patients and doctors back in charge,” Jindal argued, “The American people are waking up to President Joe Biden and the Democrats’ healthcare failures,” an assertion that most likely would be challenged by the millions of Americans who have turned to Obamacare over the past 11 years. 

In May, Jindal released a video for the America First Policy Institute aimed at Obamacare. Heavily promoted on social media, the video told viewers that “Obamacare was sold on a lie. It massively increased the cost of health care in America.”  

That assertion was quickly challenged by Washington Post columnist Glenn Kessler, who tracks falsehoods made by public figures. Kessler did substantial research on this one and concluded: “Jindal is relying on an old rhetorical trick — taking numbers out of context and then assigning all of the fault for a rise in prices to Obamacare. Health insurance costs have risen, but at a slower pace since the law was implemented. That’s what Obama suggested would happen, though he certainly oversold the potential impact rhetorically when campaigning in 2008.” Kessler added: “The law’s biggest success has been its intended main purpose — reducing the number of Americans without health insurance.”  

When open enrollment begins in a few months, and millions of Americans turn to Obamacare policies for their insurance next year, I’d bet they’re thinking how lucky they are to still have an option for health insurance for themselves and their families. 

As for Jindal, Kessler awarded him three Pinocchios out of four, which indicates a significant factual error and/or obvious contradictions. (The Post reported that Jindal said he was “unpersuaded” by Kessler’s research. The America First Institute said Obama “did not lower costs but instead shifted costs to taxpayers,” an assertion we’ll examine in a future post.)

Jindal’s hit against Obamacare may be the opening salvo in an election season pushback to the Affordable Care Act. It’s too early to see if health care will rise to the top of politicians’ talking points in the next few months, but Jindal’s misleading and erroneous post might signal it’s time to prepare for the next attack on the ACA.