President Obama delivered his sharpest rebuke yet against Obamacare’s opponents in a major victory lap speech Tuesday, as the country awaits a Supreme Court decision that could derail a big part of the healthcare law.
“There’s something deeply cynical about constant efforts to roll back progress,” Obama told the Catholic Health Association. “I understand folks being worried before the law was passed and there wasn’t a reality there to examine. But once you see folks having healthcare, you’d think it’d be time to move on.”
The president was speaking to the country’s largest network of Catholic hospitals and nursing homes. A strong supporter of the Affordable Care Act, the association has largely stayed out of the battle between the administration and the Catholic Church over its rules for employers to cover birth control.
“As you know, how long we have wanted and waited for a healthcare system that treats everyone with dignity,” said Sister Carol Keehan, the association’s president, who introduced Obama. “Many presidents tried and failed, but not President Obama.”
Obama returned the praise, saying the law would never have passed with the association’s help. “Without your moral force, we would not have succeeded,” he told the group.
But the president quickly pivoted to a full-throated pitch for the law, praising how it has extended health coverage to millions of previously uninsured Americans. And he blasted Republicans for continuing to oppose it, five years in, saying they have made unwarranted claims that the law would worsen healthcare in the U.S.
“The unending ‘chicken little’ warnings that somehow making health insurance fairer and easier to buy would somehow lead to an end of the American way of life — lo and behold, that didn’t happen,” Obama said.
“In fact, the Affordable Care Act worked out better than some of us anticipated,” he added. “The critics stubbornly ignore reality.”
There’s no doubt the law has made health insurance affordable for millions more Americans who were previously uninsured, mostly through federal subsidies. What politicians are still divided over is whether it has helped or hurt the overall cost and quality of plans.
Republicans have been highlighting some recent proposals by insurers to dramatically raise the price of their plans — and complaints by consumers that plans still impose high deductibles or limited doctor networks.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Tuesday Obama’s comments about the healthcare law “border on the absurd.”
“I imagine the families threatened with double-digit premium increases would beg to differ, as would the millions of families who received cancellation notices for the plans they had and wanted to keep,” McConnell said on the Senate floor.
The Supreme Court is expected to rule within weeks on the King v. Burwell challenge to the law. The case is trying to block federal insurance subsidies to Americans living in states relying on healthcare.gov instead of running their own insurance marketplaces. If the justices uphold the challenge, it would cost millions of poor Americans their coverage and send ripple effects through the insurance market.
• This article was originally published at 12:49 p.m. and has been updated.
