After a year in which Obamacare became a rallying cry for Republican candidates on the campaign trail, the Obama administration is starting 2015 with a renewed defense of the federal healthcare law and entreaties for Americans to participate.
In the first weekly address by the White House in 2015, Vice President Joe Biden urged Americans to enroll in healthcare under the Affordable Care Act.
It’s due to Obamacare, Biden said, that “access to quality healthcare is improving.”
“Everyone is beginning to realize what millions of you already know — the Affordable Care Act is working,” Biden said. “And we’re just getting started.”
The administration’s first goal is to sign up as many new people as possible by Feb. 15, when open enrollment ends.
But those numbers will mean more for the health of the healthcare law than merely expanding coverage: They could also prove an important, persuasive statistic for Democrats in the coming fight with congressional Republicans, who have promised to seek to gut parts or all of the law. The president has suggested he would veto any full repeal measures that make it to his desk.
A Supreme Court decision later this year could also spell trouble for the ACA, with the potential to gut the subsidies to states that are at the heart of the law.
