WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama struck back forcefully Friday against Republican critics of his health-care law, saying "the unifying principle in the Republican Party at the moment is making sure 30 million people don't have health care." At a news conference, the president said Republicans are not even offering an alternative to his Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act,...
WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama struck back forcefully Friday against Republican critics of his health-care law, saying "the unifying principle in the Republican Party at the moment is making sure 30 million people don't have health care."
At a news conference, the president said Republicans are not even offering an alternative to his Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which the GOP refers to as ObamaCare.
"Now, I think the really interesting question is why it is that my friends in the other party have made the idea of preventing these people from getting health care their holy grail," Obama said.
The president acknowledged there will be "glitches" as the law is implemented, as was the case with other major new government initiatives, including the prescription drug benefit for seniors adopted by President George W. Bush with support from Republicans in Congress.
Obama also criticized some Republicans for threatening to shut down the government unless Congress votes to stop funding for the Affordable Care Act. Eleven Republican senators, including Sen. David Vitter, R-La., have signed a letter saying they won't support a continuing budget resolution, needed to keep the government operating after Oct. 1, unless it also repeals all funding for the Affordable Care Act.
"The idea that you would shut down the government unless you prevent 30 million people from getting health care is a bad idea," Obama said. "What you should be thinking about is how can we advance and improve ways for middle-class families to have some security so that if they work hard, they can get ahead and their kids can get ahead."
Vitter has said the law is train wreck and will damage health care delivery and the economy. Rep. Steve Scalise, R-Jefferson, said recently that an administration official who reported only isolated incidents" of employers cutting back hours so that they wouldn't have to provide health coverage must be living "in some cocoon."
But the president said the law is already benefiting tens of millions of Americans, even before people, starting Oct. 1, can purchase health insurance from competing policies at new marketplaces, with access to subsidies for low and moderate income Americans.
"As we speak, right now, for the 85 percent of Americans who already have health insurance, they are benefiting from being able to keep their kid on their -- on their plan if their kid is 26 or younger," Obama said. "That's benefiting millions of young people around the country, which is why lack of insurance among young people has actually gone down."
"You've got millions of people who've received rebates because part of the Affordable Care Act was to say that if an insurance company isn't spending 80 percent of your premium on your health care, you get some money back. And lo and behold, people have been getting their money back. It means that folks who've been bumping up with lifetime limits on their insurance that leaves them vulnerable -- that doesn't exist. Seniors have been getting discounts on their prescription drugs. That's happening right now. Free preventive care, mammograms, contraception -- that's happening right now."
The president recently delayed the health law's mandate that employers with 50 or more workers provide health coverage for full-time workers, or pay a penalty, for a year, until 2015.
"In a normal political environment, it would have been easier for me to simply call up the speaker and say, you know what? This is a tweak that doesn't go to the essence of the law," Obama said Friday. "It has to do with, for example, are we able to simplify the attestation of employers as to whether they're already providing health insurance or not. It looks like there may be some better ways to do this. Let's make a technical change of the law."
"That would be the normal thing that I would prefer to do, but we're not in a normal atmosphere around here when it comes to, quote- unquote, "ObamaCare.
Obama said he used his executive authority to implement what he described as a technical change, a delay in one of the law's provisions.