President Obama, in the wake of bruising midterm elections for his party, warned Republicans Wednesday that he wouldn’t let them scrap Obamacare’s individual mandate.
“The individual mandate is a line I can’t cross because the concept, borrowed from Massachusetts, from a law instituted by a former opponent of mine, Mitt Romney, [he] understood that if you’re providing health insurance to people through the private marketplace, then you’ve got to make sure that people can’t game the system and just wait until they get sick before they go try to buy health insurance,” Obama said in a post-election press conference.
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Republicans are expected to take aim at unpopular provisions in the president’s signature health law, such as the tax on medical devices, but such votes would require a veto-proof majority.
Obama’s remarks on Wednesday amounted to a warning shot to Republicans, telling them not to pursue dramatic changes to a bill that he sees as a legacy-defining achievement.
“On healthcare, there are certainly some lines I’m going to draw. Repeal of the law I won’t sign,” Obama said. “Efforts that would take away healthcare from the 10 million people who now have it and the millions more who are eligible to get it, we’re not going to support.”
Regardless, Republicans see the issue as a political winner because Democrats would be forced to defend an unpopular law.
Still, Obama said he was open to listening to Republicans — without making any commitments to alter Obamacare.
“If in fact one of the items on Mitch McConnell’s agenda and John Boehner’s agenda is to make responsible changes to the Affordable Care Act, to make it work better, I’m going to be very open and receptive to hearing those ideas,” he said. “But what I will remind them is that despite all the contention, we now know that the law works.”
