WASHINGTON — The Democrats were not subtle this week about what their health care priorities are this election: protecting abortion rights, and making America feel good again.
The four-day Chicago event projected a reenergized party charged to fight for reproductive rights, low drug costs, health care freedom — and a healthier state of mind. Former President Bill Clinton labeled Harris “the president of joy.” Oprah Winfrey said Harris-Walz is the “common sense” ticket and called for voters to “choose joy.” Former First Lady Michelle Obama told the cheering crowd that “Hope is making a comeback.”
Vice President Kamala Harris took the stage Thursday night with a similar tone. “With this election, our nation has a precious, fleeting opportunity to move past the bitterness, cynicism, and divisive battles of the past. A chance to chart a new way forward. Not as members of any one party or faction, but as Americans.”
But while elements of the Democratic convention — including a roll call vote featuring Lil Jon — starkly contrasted with the Republicans’ convention last month, speakers also wasted no time attacking former President Trump’s health care goals.
“They’ll repeal the Affordable Care Act. They’ll gut Social Security and Medicare. And they will ban abortion across this country, with or without Congress,” Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, Harris’ running mate, said Wednesday.
A large bound copy of Project 2025, a blueprint for a second Trump administration drawn up by the conservative think tank Heritage Foundation, was repeatedly brandished and mentioned across dozens of speeches.
Trump himself has distanced himself from the project and called it “seriously extreme.” Harris campaigners — and the vice president herself on Thursday — point out that many of the project’s authors worked in the first Trump administration.
The 900-page Project 2025 was “written by his closest advisers, and its sum total is to pull our country back to the past,” Harris said. “But America, we are not going back.”
While the Trump campaign blasted out seven emails during and immediately after her speech attacking Harris’ record on the border, the economy and tax policy, they did not tangle with her health care claims on Thursday night.
But that doesn’t mean they won’t again soon. Here are the key health topics from the DNC and how the Trump campaign is responding.
Reproductive rights
By far, the biggest theme of the week was Harris’ intent to restore Roe v. Wade and codify it into law, rolling back limits in 25 states since the Supreme Court overturned national abortion protections.
“Let’s be clear about how we got here. Donald Trump hand-picked members of the United States Supreme Court to take away reproductive freedom, and now he brags about it,” Harris said.
Trump has certainly boasted about shaping the court with three successful nominations, but he also maintains that the majority of Americans, regardless of political party, wanted to see Roe overturned. That does not bear out in polling; most voters say they oppose the court’s 2022 decision.
Unlike at the Republican convention, nearly every major DNC speaker brought up abortion, framing it as an issue of individual freedom. Monday night’s schedule featured three women who described how abortion restrictions dangerously jeopardized their health or, in the case of Hadley Duvall’s story, would introduce new barriers for abused minors. Duvall recounted her experience miscarrying following sexual abuse by her stepfather.
Trump has said he wants to leave abortion law up to states and that he supports exceptions in the case of rape, incest or danger to the life of a pregnant person. But in practice, medical experts say, it is difficult to know when someone qualifies for those exceptions or when a doctor could be penalized for providing care.
Democrats did not stop at abortion rights, repeatedly referring to Project 2025 to paint a picture of a second Trump administration that would limit contraception and fertility treatments as well.
“On page 562, it says that Donald Trump could use an obscure law from the 1800s to single handedly ban abortion in all 50 states, even putting doctors in jail,” Colorado Gov. Jared Polis told delegates. “Page 486, puts limits on contraception. Page 450 threatens access to IVF on page 455, Project 2025. Says that states have to report miscarriages to the Trump administration.”
But Republican criticism over the Democrats’ reproductive rights messaging is also brewing. Trump running mate JD Vance, an Ohio senator, accused Walz of lying about his family’s fertility journey when he talked about his wife undergoing in vitro fertilization to conceive their children. Gwen Walz actually underwent intrauterine insemination, a method that involves inserting sperm into a uterus with a catheter.
“It’s just such a bizarre thing to lie about, right? There’s nothing wrong with having a baby through IVF or not having a baby through IVF. Like, why lie about it?” Vance told reporters in Milwaukee recently.
While both are common fertility procedures, IUI has not faced the same threats as IVF because it does not involve freezing and potentially destroying embryos. For instance, an Alabama court decision establishing fetal personhood inadvertently made IVF illegal in the state earlier this year, a move the legislature soon reversed.
The Harris campaign, and Gwen Walz, later clarified that she had received IUI and said they had employed IVF as an umbrella term. In his big speech accepting the vice presidential nomination on Wednesday night, Tim Walz instead said, “We had access to fertility treatments.”
The issue is unlikely to fade soon. Vance and other Republicans have latched onto Tim Walz’ words to argue the governor is dishonest and Democrats are fearmongering.
“Is there anything this guy doesn’t lie about?” National Republican Senatorial Committee spokesman Mike Berg wrote on X.
Health care costs
Harris, President Biden and other Democrats also touted the administration’s work to lower drug prices through Medicare negotiation and cost caps for seniors. The boasts were timely, as the Biden administration released the government’s negotiated prices for the first batch of drugs one week earlier.
Biden also touted the lowest uninsured rate in history as ACA marketplace enrollment ballooned. But while the U.S. uninsured rate hit a record low in 2023, the rate crept upward early this year. Democrats are also fighting to maintain marketplace subsidies that keep enrollees rates low; those could expire at the end of next year.
On Thursday, the vice president again pointed to Trump’s record. “We are not going back to when Donald Trump tried to cut Social Security and Medicare. We are not going back to when he tried to get rid of the Affordable Care Act, when insurance companies could deny people with pre-existing conditions,”
Trump has said he would not “cut a penny” from Medicare or Social Security in a second presidency. He also recently told North Carolina rallygoers, “I’m going to keep the Affordable Care Act unless we can do something much better.”
Yet on the campaign trail, Trump has referred to Medicare negotiation as “socialist” price control and promised to lower drug costs himself, though he has not laid out an alternate plan. He also warned this week that under Harris, “private health insurance policies are gone,” and Harris would institute a “communist” system where everyone gets health care under a public option.
This is a ripe attack point for Republicans, since Harris endorsed Medicare for All on the 2020 campaign trail and co-sponsored a bill with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) during her time as a senator, but has since walked back the plan. Public polling suggests voters are split on the issue; while many believe health care is a federal government responsibility, nearly half do not want to lose their private insurance plans, according to Gallup.
Yet Harris’ more central-left stance now could alienate some progressive voters as well, a position Trump surrogates are eager to exploit.
“Kamala Harris’ spokespeople are once again alleging she has flip-flopped on her positions — this time saying she no longer supports socialist Medicare for All,” his campaign spokesperson Karoline Leavitt told CNN.
The Covid record
Democrats took the opportunity to slam Trump’s response to the coronavirus pandemic, a topic that is far from top of mind for many voters but whose handling remains a heated debate between the two campaigns.
“While schools closed and dead bodies filled morgues, Donald Trump downplayed the virus,” Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.) said Monday. “He told us to inject bleach into our bodies. He peddled conspiracy theories across the country.”
The bleach reference harkens back to a Trump suggestion during an April 2020 press briefing that Trump insisted, a day later, was “sarcastic.” He had said during the briefing that “we [could] hit the body with a…very powerful light,” or investigate using disinfectant “by injection inside or almost a cleaning.”
The Covid-19 response is a complicated arena for both campaigns. Under Trump, Operation Warp Speed worked with pharmaceutical companies to develop vaccines in record time for the virus. The Biden administration handled the bulk of the vaccine rollout and the unwinding of emergency measures.
Yet both Biden and Trump have repeatedly attacked each other’s records. Trump has accused Democrats of fearmongering and said harsh shutdowns slowed the economy and vaccine and masking requirements violated personal freedoms.
Biden and speakers at the DNC, on the other hand, said that Trump promoted misinformation and Covid conspiracy theories, and downplayed the virus’s harm — and its toll. While both parties are eager to move past the pandemic, the Harris campaign has credited Biden as maneuvering the economy out of coronavirus’s clutches, a claim Trump has railed against.
Biden took up that mantle Monday, saying, “Covid no longer controls our lives. We got from economic crisis to the strongest economy in the entire world. Record 16 million new jobs.”
Trump this week accused the Biden administration of doctoring those employment numbers. The back-and-forth illustrates that while the pandemic may be over, its role in each campaign’s rhetoric is not.
