President Obama Drops The Reality Hammer On Republicans After Supreme Court Victory

President Obama celebrated today’s Supreme Court ruling in favor of ACA subsidies by giving Republicans a dose of the straight truth about Obamacare.

Obama took a victory lap by talking about the success of the law and called today a victory for hard working Americans across the country.

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The President then hammered Republicans with a dose of reality.

The President said:

And when it comes to preexisting conditions — someday, our grandkids will ask us if there was really a time when America discriminated against people who get sick. Because that is something this law has ended for good. That affects everybody with health insurance — not just folks who got insurance through the Affordable Care Act. All of America has protections it didn’t have before.

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Meanwhile, the law has helped hold the price of health care to its slowest growth in 50 years. If your family gets insurance through your job — so you’re not using the Affordable Care Act — you’re still paying about $1,800 less per year on average than you would be if we hadn’t done anything. By one leading measure, what business owners pay out in wages and salaries is now finally growing faster than what they spend on health insurance. That hasn’t happened in 17 years — and that’s good for workers and it’s good for the economy.

The point is, this is not an abstract thing anymore. This is not a set of political talking points. This is reality. We can see how it is working. This law is working exactly as it’s supposed to. In many ways, this law is working better than we expected it to. For all the misinformation campaigns, all the doomsday predictions, all the talk of death panels and job destruction, for all the repeal attempts — this law is now helping tens of millions of Americans.

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Five years in, this is no longer about a law. This is not about the Affordable Care Act as legislation, or Obamacare as a political football. This is health care in America.

And unlike Social Security or Medicare, a lot of Americans still don’t know what Obamacare is beyond all the political noise in Washington. Across the country, there remain people who are directly benefitting from the law but don’t even know it. And that’s okay. There’s no card that says “Obamacare” when you enroll. But that’s by design, for this has never been a government takeover of health care, despite cries to the contrary. This reform remains what it’s always been: a set of fairer rules and tougher protections that have made health care in America more affordable, more attainable, and more about you — the consumer, the American people. It’s working.

As the Republican Party has a collective mental breakdown over the fact that people have access to affordable healthcare, the rest of the country is with Obama. What the President did today was give Republicans the lay of the land. Not the land that Fox News has fooled them into believing is real, but the true post-ACA American landscape.

The reality is that only the Republican Party supports repeal, and when Republicans were confronted with the possibility of having to come up with a replacement for the subsidies, they fell apart.

The American people are never going to support any Republican plan to take away their access to affordable health care. Republicans lost, and the ACA is here to stay.

Jason Easley

Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.

Awards and  Professional Memberships

Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association