When Vance was interviewed on the September 15 edition of NBC’s Meet the Press about his running mate’s much-derided debate answer that he has “concepts of a plan” to finally deliver on his yearslong promise to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, Vance outlined the campaign’s plan of “deregulating the insurance markets” if former President Donald Trump is re-elected this year:

On September 18, Vance doubled down on this position at a rally, saying that people with a “chronic condition” should be separated from others in the insurance market, which as Bloomberg described, “would effectively end the ACA’s guarantee that people pay the same prices and get the same benefits regardless of their health status, a popular part of the program.”

As New York magazine’s Jonathan Chait said, “The Trump plan, according to Vance, is to permit insurance companies to discriminate against people with preexisting conditions.” Which in essence means “Vance is advocating a partial or complete return to the system that existed before Obamacare." KFF explained how the sort of high-risk pools envisioned by Vance worked prior to the ACA — or more precisely, how they never worked.

A Media Matters review of SnapStream transcripts since Vance’s Meet the Press interview found that the news programs of ABC, CBS, and NBC have entirely ignored his promise to dismantle these Affordable Care Act protections. The closest that any of the networks came to covering this topic was NBC’s Nightly News on September 19, which aired 9 seconds of Vice President Kamala Harris mocking Trump’s “concepts of a plan” comment.

The silence around Vance’s comments echoes a similar failure by network news programs to cover a Trump proposal that is guaranteed to raise food prices, which was instead mentioned on two late night comedy programs.

The broadcast networks’ failure to cover this vitally important issue over the past two weeks must not preclude its mention in the October 1 vice presidential debate on CBS. As Politico noted in its coverage of Vance’s comments:

Media Matters searched transcripts in the SnapStream video database for all original episodes of ABC’s Good Morning America, World News Tonight, and This Week; CBS’ Mornings, Evening News, and Face the Nation; and NBC’s Today, Nightly News, and Meet the Press for any of the terms “Trump,” “former President,” “Vance,” “nominee,” or “candidate” within close proximity of any of the terms “Obama care,” “Obamacare,” “health care,” “healthcare,” “Affordable Care Act,” “ACA,” or “insurance” or any variations of any of the terms “condition,” “pre-existing,” “cover,” “risk,” or “pool” from September 16, 2024, the day after GOP vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance outlined the campaign's health care plan on NBC's Meet the Press, through September 30, 2024. 

We timed segments, which we defined as instances when Vance’s comments were the stated topic of discussion or when we found significant discussion of the comments. We defined significant discussion as instances when two or more speakers in a multitopic segment discussed Vance's comment with one another.

We also timed mentions, which we defined as instances when a single speaker in a segment on another topic mentioned Vance's comments without another speaker in the segment engaging with the comment, and teasers, which we defined as instances when the anchor or host promoted a segment about Vance's comments scheduled to air later in the broadcast.

We rounded all times to the nearest minute.