Don Bacon still wants to strip health care from tens of thousands of Nebraskans

In 2017, Nebraska Republican U.S. Rep. Don Bacon said he was voting “hell yes” for President Donald Trump’s bill to repeal the Affordable Care Act. Seven years later, his official website says he wants to keep two parts of the law and change what he calls “this failed policy.”

Bacon is running in a tough reelection race in Nebraska’s 2nd Congressional District against Democratic state Sen. Tony Vargas. The Cook Political Record rates the contest a toss-up. 

Although Bacon calls himself a centrist, he has repeatedly sided with Trump and his party against legislation to expand access to affordable health insurance and to lower the cost of medications. 

The 2010 Affordable Care Act, commonly known as Obamacare, created health insurance exchanges through which individuals can purchase affordable plans; enabled states to cover more people through Medicare; allowed children to stay on their family’s insurance plan through age 25; banned insurance company discrimination against people with preexisting medical conditions; and required insurers to fully cover basic care, including annual physicals, flu shots, and mammograms. 

About 86,000 additional Nebraskans became eligible to receive Medicaid insurance coverage under the law after voters approved a measure opting in to expansion of the program in 2018. Another 117,882 individuals in the state are currently enrolled in a marketplace health insurance plan. At the time the ACA was enacted, an estimated 770,000 Nebraskans had a preexisting medical condition that insurers could use to deny coverage or hike premiums.  

When Bacon first ran for Congress in 2016, his campaign website said, “Don will repeal Obamacare and work to reduce health care costs with free market solutions.”

In May 2017, Bacon voted for the American Health Care Act, known as Trumpcare, which would have taken away health care coverage from about 14 million Americans, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office and the Joint Committee on Taxation. The bill passed in the House of Representatives, but narrowly failed in the Senate.

Bacon’s official congressional webpage still says that he opposes most of the law and wants to get rid of it. “Congressman Bacon supports keeping the parts of ACA that worked well: *Pre-existing condition protections *Staying on your parent’s plan until your 26,” it says. “Congressman Bacon supports changing the one size fits all approach to the ACA. This failed policy had created policies so expensive many individuals can’t afford them.” 

The percentage of Americans with health insurance plans increased from 83.7% in 2010 to 92.1% in 2022.

Asked for comment, a spokesperson for Bacon’s office referred the Nebraska Independent to his website issues page.

Trump has refused to say how he would replace the Affordable Care Act if he won back the White House, saying in his Sept. 10 debate against Vice President Kamala Harris, “I have concepts of a plan.” His running mate, Ohio Republican Sen. J.D. Vance, told NBC News on Sept. 15 that Trump would deregulate insurance markets and allow insurers to put some Americans into higher-risk pools. Experts say this would mean higher premiums for those with preexisting conditions.

Bacon’s official page also notes his opposition to the Elijah E. Cummings Lower Drug Costs Now Act, a bill that would have authorized the federal government to negotiate directly with pharmaceutical companies to ensure lower drug prices for Americans with Medicare Part D and to cap out-of-pocket annual spending for those individuals. He has claimed that if pharmaceutical companies see smaller profits, they will do less research and development of new treatments. 

In 2022, Bacon voted against the Inflation Reduction Act, which included a modified version of that bill and a $35-a-month cap on out-of-pocket insulin costs for Medicare beneficiaries, calling it “Democrats’ reckless tax and spending package.” The law passed without a single Republican vote after Vice President Harris broke a tie vote in the Senate. Still, Bacon ran ads in 2022 and again in 2024 falsely claiming that he “capped insulin prices at $35 a month.”

According to OpenSecrets, Bacon has received more than $600,000 in campaign contributions from the insurance industry over the course of his political career and more than $650,000 from the health care sector.

Vargas, who backed Medicaid expansion and supports allowing “Nebraskans of any age to buy into a Medicare-like health care plan at an affordable rate” as well as more drug price negotiation, wrote on social media in March: “If Don Bacon was seriously about lowering costs for working families, he would have voted to cap the cost of insulin at $35. But instead he sided with Big Pharma companies who have funneled him over $80k to buy another term in power.”

Updated 9-19-24 to include a response from Rep. Bacon’s office.