President Obama urged his critics Wednesday to abandon their Obamacare repeal agenda and work to strengthen the law, saying its latest victory before the Supreme Court sent a clear signal that it’s time to move on.
The president stumped for his namesake reforms in Tennessee, one of many red states that have refused to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, during a town hall-style event at a Nashville elementary school.
Rattling off a list of his reforms — sick people cannot be denied coverage, children can stay on their parents’ plans until age 26 — the president said his overhaul is helping people even if they don’t realize it.
“I’m hoping that what we can do is now focus on how we can make it even better, because it’s not as if we’ve solved all the problems in our health care system,” Mr. Obama said.
He said only a third of the uninsured have obtained coverage under the law, wasteful health care spending remains rampant and “the quality of care isn’t always where it needs to be.”
The White House cast his speech as attempt to unify Capitol Hill partisans and rebuke those who have “put political interests ahead of the health of their citizens.”
It was also a victory lap of sorts. The Supreme Court last week said qualified customers could access government subsidies on Obamacare’s exchanges no matter where they live, solidifying the law in 34 states that didn’t set up their own health care markets.
With subsidies flowing to all the states, congressional Republicans are retooling their attacks on the substance of Obamacare. They now are highlighting rising premiums and other perceived flaws as the presidential race gets underway.
“Despite the president’s promises, Obamacare is increasing costs for hardworking families,” said Cory Fritz, a spokesman for House Speaker John A. Boehner, Ohio Republican. “States including Tennessee are bracing for double-digit premium hikes, and millions of Americans are forgoing treatment because of sky-high deductibles.”
Mr. Obama has resisted significant changes to his law, including Republican-led attempts to repeal its taxes and mandates, but vowed Wednesday to take up Republican ideas that would build on his reforms.
“I didn’t mind stealing ideas from Mitt Romney,” he said, evoking the Obamacare template his 2012 Republican rival signed into law as governor of Massachusetts.
Mr. Obama also pushed states to expand their Medicaid programs to people making 138 percent of federal poverty level, a part of Obamacare that the Supreme Court made optional in 2012.
Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam, a Republican, pushed this year to use Obamacare’s federal funds to cover more than 250,000 of the state’s poorest residents. The Republican-led legislature rejected the proposal, though, leaving Tennessee among the 21 states that resisted expansion.
Augmenting Medicaid is one of two major ways Obamacare expands health care coverage in the states, alongside the subsidies that Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and five other justices upheld for customers in states that rely on the federal HealthCare.gov portal.
Polling released Wednesday said more than six in 10 Americans approved of the court’s decision in the case, known as King v. Burwell. Although public opinion split along partisan lines, nearly a third (29 percent) of Republicans approved of the court’s ruling and 12 percent of Democrats disapproved, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.
Many Capitol Hill Republicans still want to use a fast-track budget tool known as “reconciliation” to pass an Obamacare repeal bill on a majority vote in the Senate, even if Mr. Obama would veto any such bill that makes it to his desk.
Because of reconciliation’s arcane rules, Republicans would have to devise legislation that reduces deficits instead of increasing them.
“The challenge with reconciliation is you can’t repeal the whole thing,” said Lanhee J. Chen, a fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution who advised Mr. Romney on health care policy during the 2012 campaign.
Congressional scorekeepers have said full repeal would increase deficits by $137 billion over the 10-year budget window, even after factoring in positive economic effects of repeal.
• Tom Howell Jr. can be reached at thowell@washingtontimes.com.
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