The Pre-existing mandate cannot work unless you have the individual mandate. Otherwise it is not insurance.
IOW if you are for the insurance companies being mandated to sell everyone a policy at a set price regardless of pre-existing conditions, that will not work unless everyone is required to buy insurance even if they don't want it.
It is simple economics. The insurance companies get a huge pool of healthy young people who are forced to buy insurance in order to pay out for all the people they are forced to cover under the pre-existing coverage mandate.
If you are for one, then you are for the other.
Donald Trump just spoke out of his knee jerk liberal big government mouth without thinking about how it was going to play in Peoria.
When he saw the fallout, he sent his sycophants and disciples into the media to try to pretend he didn't mean what he said.
He said it. He meant it. Deal with it.
As I understand it there are a number for mandates plural in that law. So he is in favor of that one. And it is one that can be disconnected from the others. In fact preexisting conditions requirements were part of every republican alternative plan I ever heard of.
They set up special pools for insurance at a state level so that, for example, little kids with terribly expensive cancer treatment, continue treatment even if their parents for some reason must change jobs.