Joe Biden To Focus On Obamacare In A State Where It Just Got More Vital

President Joe Biden is about to spend another day reminding voters that health care is on the ballot in 2024.

And this time he’s doing it in a swing state that suddenly has 350,000 more people for whom the health care debate is personal.

In a visit Tuesday to Raleigh, North Carolina , Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris will tout a series of recently enacted Democratic initiatives designed to make health care more affordable, White House officials said. Those new initiatives include programs designed to reduce the price of prescription drugs as well as additional financial assistance for people buying private insurance through the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare.

Biden and Harris won’t just talk about the past, the White House officials said. They also plan to lay out a vision for how they’d like to expand on these initiatives ― by, for example, giving the federal government even more leverage over prescription drug prices. These are the same ideas that Biden mentioned in his State of the Union address earlier this month.

But in what is likely to be the most politically charged part of their speeches, Biden and Harris will contrast their administration’s record and vision with the Republicans’ stand.

That will mean highlighting the GOP’s history of trying to repeal the Affordable Care Act and make severe cuts in Medicaid. It will also mean citing a new budget plan from House Republicans that seeks to undo the Affordable Care Act’s core elements while rolling back big pieces of the new drug pricing laws.

Former President Donald Trump is, of course, a big part of the GOP history on the Affordable Care Act. He tried to lead repeal efforts in 2017, the first year of his presidency. Now, the party’s