US President-elect Joe Biden has defended the healthcare reform act known as Obamacare as the Supreme Court considered whether to overturn the law and cut health insurance to millions of Americans.
Speaking in Wilmington, Delaware, on Tuesday Biden blamed “far right ideologues” for trying to “strip healthcare access away from the American people”.
“I’m not naïve to the fact that healthcare is an issue that has divided the American people in the past,” he acknowledged, adding that the Affordable Care Act is still quite popular.
He said that the law he and President Obama helped pass has allowed Americans to think less about the costs of their treatment “and has spared countless families from financial ruin.”
His speech came as the Supreme Court heard arguments in a case that could see the healthcare law dismantled.
The case represents the latest Republican legal attack on the 2010 law. Republicans also have failed numerous times to repeal Obamacare in Congress, though President Donald Trump’s administration has taken steps to get rid of it.
But justices on Tuesday signaled they are unlikely to strike down the law.
Chief Justice John Roberts and fellow conservative Brett Kavanaugh indicated skepticism during two hours of arguments in the case toward the stance by the Republican challengers that the entire law must fall if a single key provision, called the individual mandate, is deemed unconstitutional.
If Roberts and Kavanaugh join the court’s three liberals in the court’s eventual ruling due by the end of June, the bulk of Obamacare would survive.
Rita Osakwe/Agency Reports
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