As Other Democrats Feud, Bloomberg Hammers Trump on Health Care

As Mr. Bloomberg’s ads blanket the airwaves, his Democratic rivals have spent most of their time going after one another, using health care as the vehicle to debate whether the party should nominate a moderate or a liberal seeking transformative change.

Lise Talbott, who works for a community health center in the Central Valley of California, in a congressional district that flipped to a Democrat in 2018 after a race dominated by health care, said she was surprised and disappointed that the Democrats running for president had not drawn more attention to Mr. Trump’s support of the lawsuit to overturn the law.

“The candidates seem to be in this battle over who’s going to get us closest to Medicare for all instead of talking about the care and coverage we have now and could lose,” Ms. Talbott said. “And because the candidates aren’t talking about it, I think a lot of people have sort of forgotten.”

Ms. Talbott, who supports Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, was active in helping defeat Jeff Denham, her district’s former Republican congressman, after he voted with most other House Republicans in 2017 to repeal the Affordable Care Act. Mr. Denham’s successor, Josh Harder, talks frequently about protecting the law, she said.

Like Mr. Bloomberg, Mr. Trump seems to understand the power of warning people that they could lose something they like. At rallies and in speeches, he has repeatedly warned that the Democrats want to replace private insurance with a national single-payer health insurance program, or Medicare for all. (In truth, only Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont and, to an extent, Ms. Warren, have embraced such a plan, with the other candidates calling for a “public option” that people could choose instead of private coverage.)

“The Democrats are pushing the socialist takeover of health care that would strip 180 million Americans of their private insurance plans and massively raise taxes on the middle class,” Mr. Trump said at a rally in Toledo, Ohio, this month. “A lot of you have private insurance plans that you love. They’re going to take them away from you.”

Whoever becomes the Democratic nominee will almost certainly make a huge issue of Mr. Trump’s attacks on the health law, as will Democrats running for the House and Senate.

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