Obamacare Is New Reality of American Health Care, the President Says
Obama also tells the story of his daughter getting meningitis.
— -- In the face of a possible Supreme Court decision that could overturn his landmark health care law, President Obama is renewing the case for why the program is a success.
“It is serving so many people so much better. And we're not going to go backwards,” the president said today in remarks to the Catholic Hospital Association’s annual conference in Washington, D.C.
The president’s remarks came as the Affordable Care Act faces a key test before the Supreme Court. The court is weighing whether individuals living in states without a statewide exchange program should continue to receive federal subsidies. If the court rules that they should not, it could unravel the law entirely.
The president seemed to warn the law’s opponents, which include those that brought about the Supreme Court lawsuit, of the political implications that would ensue from getting rid of the most popular parts of the law, including a ban on pre-existing conditions and the ability for children up to age 26 to stay on their parents' plans.
“There is a reality that people on the ground, day to day, are experiencing. Their lives are better. This is now part of the fabric of how we care for one another. This is health care in America,” he said.
Obama might also have been trying to win over a very specific constituency listening to him today -- the nuns who filled the audience, including Sister Carol Keehan, the president and CEO of the Catholic Health Association and the person who introduced the president.
“I just love nuns generally,” Obama joked.
The president made an economic case for the law, arguing it helped foster 63 straight months of growth after it passed and contributed to reduced health care premiums. He also made more of an emotional plea, suggesting that critics of the law would deny “the dignity of a grandfather who can get the preventive care he needs. The freedom of an entrepreneur who can start a new venture. The joy of a wife who thought she’d never again take her husband’s hand and go for a walk in God’s creation.”
And he also made an appeal based on his own experience with the health care system, telling the story of rushing his daughter Sasha, just an infant at the time, to the hospital when she contracted meningitis.
“I’ve never felt so scared and helpless in my life,” he said, noting that her sickness was only detected because the Obamas had a good pediatrician, and that he wondered, while in the hospital with his young daughter, about parents who weren’t lucky enough to have quality health care for themselves and their children.
The White House today also launched a new website that celebrates the law as a hard-won historical battle. The interactive page includes a timeline of health care reform over the course of American history and a letter that the late-Sen. Ted Kennedy had delivered to the president after his death, in which he urged the president to follow through on the ACA as a last wish.