President Barack Obama is aiming to change the conversation around his health care law from talk about undoing it to talk of how to make it better.
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The Supreme Court ruled 6-3 last Thursday that Obama’s health care overhaul is here to stay, rejecting a major challenge that would have imperiled the landmark law and health insurance for millions of Americans.
“I’m feeling pretty good about how health care is going”, Obama said before he removed his suit jacket and answered questions about health care from Tennesseans seated at tables in an elementary school cafeteria.
As he stepped out of his limo into rainy Nashville weather Wednesday afternoon, President Barack Obama was handed an umbrella.
Obama urged Republican state legislators to “think about the people here in Tennessee who are working hard and struggling and just need a little bit of help”.
Another question about veterans’ health care was asked, and the president pointed out that the VA is entirely separate from Obamacare, but we “have to give them good health care”.
“The hope is that we will put pressure on those individuals, and it’s been nearly all Republicans, who have put political interests ahead of the health of their citizens”, Earnest said. “The General Assembly’s failure to expand TennCare is not only costing our state $1.77 billion each year, but it leaves 179,000 Tennesseans without coverage-and hundreds of them will die every year as the TGA fails to act”.
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.
It was no coincidence that he chose to make his case in Tennessee, where the GOP-controlled state legislature refused a Medicaid expansion even though it would cover more than 200,000 of its residents and has support from the state’s Republican governor, Bill Haslam.
Accompanying the president aboard the Air Force One flight was Natoma Canfield, an Ohio cancer survivor who wrote in 2009 about being forced to drop her health insurance after she could no longer afford the monthly premium.
Opponents of the law claimed that the actual wording of the Affordable Care Act passed by Congress made subsidies available only to insurance customers who bought their policies through “an exchange established by the state” where the policyholders live.
“When you get sick and you don’t have health insurance, then that is draining your resources for other things”, President Obama said. “Washington is kind of a insane place”.
“I never imagined in my wildest dreams that anyone would read it, let alone him”, Bryant said in her introduction.
“When I first came in, he and I had a chance to work together on a number of things, and he’s been a terrific advocate on behalf of health care for a lot of people”, Obama said.
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After Supreme Court action last week, the Affordable Care Act is on even sturdier ground. “It’s time for Tennessee Republicans to vote to pass Insure Tennessee because it saves lives, keeps our hospitals open and improves the economy”.
