Does GOP Senate candidate Eric Hovde want to repeal the Affordable Care Act?

It’s been around for well over a decade, but it’s still a hot topic in congressional campaigns in 2024: the Affordable Care Act. 

That’s true in the U.S. Senate race in Wisconsin, where Democratic U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin faces Republican challenger Eric Hovde.

"My opponent wants to repeal the Affordable Care Act and kick millions off their health insurance," Baldwin said July 23 at Vice President Kamala Harris’ first presidential campaign rally in West Allis. 

She’s made similar claims before, including in a post on the social media platform X that has nearly a quarter of a million views. 

Does Hovde want to repeal the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare? And has his position on the issue changed over the years? Let’s take a look. 

When we asked Baldwin’s campaign for backup, communications director Andrew Mamo shared a memo with Hovde’s comments about the Affordable Care Act from 2024, 2017 and 2012. 

The most recent of those examples was in June of this year, when Hovde was interviewed by WMTV 15, a Madison television station. 

"Would you want to repeal the Affordable Care Act?" the reporter asked. 

"Oh, 100%. I think we need to change the Affordable Care Act," Hovde answered. 

Hovde added the "only thing I think that was worthy in that bill was pre-existing conditions. So, I believe in supporting and keeping pre-existing conditions."

Hovde is referring to the part of the act that says insurers can’t refuse to cover or charge more when people have preexisting conditions: such as multiple sclerosis, which Hovde was diagnosed with in 1991. 

Baldwin’s campaign also shared clips of Hovde’s remarks in 2017, when he said he would have voted for two Republican bills that would have repealed and replaced the Affordable Care Act. 

"You should push it through. You should get it done because it’s a vast improvement (to) where we are. But is it a perfect bill, absolutely not," Hovde told conservative radio host Jerry Bader on WTAQ in June 2017.

And in 2012, when he was running in the Republican primary for U.S. Senate, Hovde made multiple comments that he’d repeal the law. 

One of those instances was during an interview with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel editorial board, in which Hovde said he’d repeal the ACA "in its entirety."

"I think we need to move back to a free-market approach to solve a lot of these problems. I think we need to break up the mini-monopolies in every single state," Hovde said.

While those are statements from the past, his comments from June indicate he still wants to repeal the ACA.

Meanwhile, PolitiFact Wisconsin reached the Hovde campaign, but they didn’t have anything to add from his most recent interview on the matter.

But we can glean more information from Hovde’s campaign website, where he lists health care reform as one of his top four issues, along with the cost of living, immigration and foreign policy.

On the health care page, Hovde doesn’t explicitly say he wants to repeal the Affordable Care Act, rather that the health care system is "deeply flawed and in need of reform."

The webpage "has many inaccurate statements and misrepresentations of data," said Donna Friedsam, a researcher at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who studies health care policy and reform. 

To be clear, we’re fact-checking Baldwin here, not Hovde. But it’s important context for understanding why he wants to repeal the Affordable Care Act. 

For example, prescription drug prices did not "skyrocket," as Hovde asserts on the website. 

Featured Fact-check

Barack Obama

stated on December 22, 2009 in an interview with the Washington Post

"I didn't campaign on a public option."

The average price of a prescription has not increased considerably in recent years, Friedsam said, pointing to a Congressional Budget Office analysis from 2022.  

That’s partly because of rebate discounts and lower-cost generic drugs that offset rising prices for brand names. 

Finally, Hovde also doesn’t lay out specifics of an alternative plan he wants to see. 

His June comments indicated he wants to keep protections for preexisting conditions, but there’s not much more information on his campaign website. 

Finally, let’s look at the last part of Baldwin’s claim, that "millions" would get kicked off their health insurance if the ACA is repealed. 

PolitiFact has examined a similar claim before, when Biden said over a hundred million Americans would lose protections for preexisting conditions if former President Donald Trump repealed the law. 

Baldwin’s campaign pointed PolitiFact Wisconsin to a 2023 fact sheet from the White House. 

The White House cited a Congressional Budget Office estimate from 2017 that found the Republican repeal legislation would "grow the ranks of the uninsured by 23 million."

And the number of people with some type of Affordable Care Act coverage has grown since 2017, the White House noted. They put the number at 40 million people whose insurance would be at risk. 

The picture is a bit complicated when estimating what would happen if the ACA was repealed. But Baldwin does seem on par that millions would lose their insurance or be at risk.  

Baldwin said Hovde "wants to repeal the Affordable Care Act, and kick millions off their health insurance."

Hovde made comments in the past, and as recently as June, that he does want to repeal the law. He calls for health care reform on his website, but doesn’t explicitly call for repealing the ACA. 

That website also contains inaccuracies and misrepresentations about the ACA, according to a health care expert that reviewed it. Hovde doesn’t lay out an alternative plan. 

We rate Baldwin’s claim True.