President Barack Obama accused Republican critics of his signature health care law of cynicism, demonstrating how hard he’s willing to fight for the law as the Supreme Court prepares to decide the fate of one of its key components.
“There’s something, I have to say, just deeply cynical about the ceaseless, endless, partisan attempts to roll back progress,” Obama said Tuesday at the Catholic Health Association’s annual conference.
It wasn’t the sharpest-elbowed defense Obama has made of the 2010 law, but he did make an emotional pitch — telling stories of Americans whose health has improved because they’re among the 16 million who have received coverage under the law, which has been under attack since it was signed.
Obama’s comments come as the Supreme Court prepares to rule on whether the health care law authorizes federal subsidies that reduce the price of coverage in the states that opted to have the federal government set up their insurance exchanges, in addition to those that built the exchanges, which serve as a marketplace to purchase coverage, themselves.
“We’re not going to go back to a time when our citizens could be denied coverage because of a pre-existing condition,” Obama said.
“When tens of millions of people couldn’t afford care, that’s not a better America. That’s not freedom — the freedom to languish in illness or to be bankrupt. … That’s not who we are. That’s not what we’re about.”
During a press conference Monday, Obama hit the Supreme Court specifically, saying the case “probably shouldn’t even have been taken up.”
“There is no reason why the existing exchanges should be overturned through a court case,” Obama said Monday. “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.”