President Obama touts Obamacare success as he challenges GOP & Supreme Court to do the right thing
President Obama called out the Supreme Court and the GOP at his G7 press conference in Germany. The President was asked if he had a plan in place in case the Supreme Court ruled against Obamacare in the King v. Burwell case. If the Supreme Court rules against the Affordable Care Act over 6.4 million people will lose their health insurance subsidies, predominantly in Red States. The loss of those subsidies will force most to give up their health insurance. That would throw the health insurance of ALL the people in those states at risk as the rates would increase dramatically whether they are from Obamacare exchanges or employers.
The President’s answer was direct and succinct. “Under well established precedent there is no reason why the existing exchanges should be overturned through a court case,” President Obama said. “It has been well documented that those who passed this legislation never intended for folks who were going through the federal exchange not to have their citizens get subsidies. That’s not just the opinion of me. That’s not just the opinion of Democrats. It’s the opinion of Republicans who worked on the legislation. The record makes it clear. Under well established statutory interpretation, approaches that have been repeatedly employed not just by Liberal Democratic judges but by Conservative judges like some on the Supreme Court. You interpret a statute based on what the intent, meaning, and overall structure of the statute provides for. And so this should be an easy case and frankly, it probably should not even have been taken up.”
The President went on to say that if the Supreme Court used a contorted interpretation of the law, it will in fact disrupt the entire insurance market in every state that chose not to setup exchanges. What the President found ironic is that the law is working better than expected. He said it was bizarre that there was little conversation about the horrors of Obamacare because they simply did not come to pass. He then went on to enumerate the Obamacare successes.
“You have 16 million people who got health insurance,” President Obama said. “Overwhelming majority of them are satisfied with their health insurance. It hasn’t had an adverse effect on people who already had health insurance. The only effect it’s had on people who already had health insurance is that they now have an insurance that they won’t be prevented from getting health insurance if they’ve got a preexisting condition. And they get additional protections with the health insurance that they do have. The cost have come in substantially lower than even our estimates about how much it would cost. Healthcare inflation overall has continued to be at some of the lowest levels in fifty years. None of the predictions about how this wouldn’t work have come to pass.”
Sadly the failed traditional mainstream media report more about the Republican misinformation about Obamacare more so than the reality about Obamacare. The President pointed out that Congress could fix the perceived problem with the letter of the law with a one sentence provision.
The reporter pressed for a Plan B. The President had a great answer. “If somebody does something that doesn’t make any sense,” President Obama said. “Then it’s hard to fix and this would be hard to fix. Fortunately there is no reason to have to do it if it doesn’t need fixing.”