Persuading more governors and state legislators to expand Medicaid could increase insurance coverage for more than 4 million Americans, according to the White House, further entrenching the health-care law known as Obamacare that some Republican presidential candidates have vowed to repeal.
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The President spent the afternoon defending the federal health care law at an elementary school just outside Nashville.
The president arrived in Nashville shortly after 12:30 p.m. on Air Force One, accompanied by Congressman Jim Cooper. Nashville Mayor Karl Dean greeted Obama on the tarmac before he spoke to a small crowd. “It’s an honor. The fact that he has been here over the last two years, it’s wonderful”. Briggs said another special session is unlikely, but believes constituents who really want the plan may be able to change the minds of Republican lawmakers against it.
Notably absent was Gov. Bill Haslam, who reportedly had meetings scheduled for today.
“President Obama’s speech at Stratton Elementary in Madison should serve as a reminder that thousands of students and families in the Metro Nashville Public School system are begging for an alternative to the school that’s been assigned to them”, said Tony Niknejad of the Tennessee Federation for Children. The President has come to the right place to learn from those who know how to solve the problems that Obamacare has created.
In the wake of the Supreme Court’s ruling last week that preserved the Affordable Care Act, Obama told the audience at a town-hall meeting in Nashville that he welcomed efforts to improve the program.
“You’ve got a president who is not popular in the state, but at the same time he has a series of recent victories, so to speak, handed to him by the Supreme Court“, Vanderbilt University political science professor John Geer said. The ACA includes sweeping measures to encourage doctors and hospitals to emphasize quality of care over quantity. “Folks like Kelly”, the president said.
Congressional Republicans said that, despite the high court decision upholding certain subsidies, the law itself remains the biggest threat to health care. “The inflation of health care costs have actually proved to be the lowest since the ACA passed”. “We should start calling this law SCOTUScare”.
It was a point Obama has made before when faced with questions of whether the president’s healthcare law would mean millions of undocumented immigrants would suddenly get free healthcare through Obamacare. But it’s not every day you see it happen to the president of the United States. It says 179,000 Tennesseans now having no health insurance would benefit from Medicaid expansion by getting preventive care they don’t get currently – cholesterol checks and cancer screenings, for example – and making visits to physicians they now do not make. Jeff Yarbro, also of Nashville. Administration officials were reportedly in something of a quandary about the visit, unsure whether it helps or hurts the Insure Tennessee cause, but indicated the governor would respond at a planned event in Memphis today (Monday).
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The president said we “need a uniquely Tennessee” action plan.
