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Presidential News
President Obama: ‘The Affordable Care Act Is Here To Stay’
WASHINGTON — Oba- macare has survived — again.
President Barack Obama
praised the Supreme Court’s decision Thursday to uphold the subsidies in his signature health care law, by recalling all the hurdles the Affordable Care Act has cleared in order to survive.
“The Affordable Care Act is here to stay,” Obama said from the White House, flanked by Vice President Joe Biden, adding shortly “Amer- icans would have gone back- wards and that’s not what we do, that’s not what America does, we move forward.”
In a 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court saved the con- troversial health care law that will define President Barack Obama’s adminis- tration for generations to come.
The ruling holds that the Af- fordable Care Act authorized federal tax credits for eligible Americans living not only in states with their own ex-
changes but also in the 34 states with federal market- places. It staved off a major political showdown and a mad scramble in states that would have needed to act to prevent millions from losing health care coverage.
“The Affordable Care Act is here to stay,” President Barack Obama said from the White House.
In a moment of high drama,
Chief Justice John Roberts sent a bolt of tension through the Court when he soberly announced that he would issue the majority opin- ion in the case. About two- thirds of the way through his reading, it became clear that he again would be responsible for rescuing Obamacare.
“Congress passed the Af- fordable Care Act to improve health insurance markets, not to destroy them,” Roberts wrote in the majority opinion. “If at all possible, we must in- terpret the Act in a way that is consistent with the former, and avoids the latter.”
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA
Supreme Court Upholds Obamacare
In a major decision, the Supreme Court on Thursday ruled 6-3 that the federal sub- sidies that help nearly 6.4 mil- lion people pay for their Obamacare health plans are legal under the Affordable Care Act.
The ruling avoids what many analysts predicted would be a nightmare scenario had the plaintiffs won: indi- vidual plan insurance prices skyrocketing in 34 states and the loss of health coverage for upwards of 8 million people in those states served by the fed- eral insurance marketplace HealthCare.gov as of next year.
"Congress passed the Af- fordable Care Act to improve health insurance markets, not to destroy them," Chief Jus- tice John Roberts wrote in the majority decision.
In its ruling in the case known as King v. Burwell, the high court accepted the ad- ministration's argument that the ACA allows federal tax credits to be issued to people who buy health plans through the federally run Obamacare exchange.
Joining Roberts in the ma- jority decision were Justices Anthony Kennedy, Ruth
Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.
Shares of hospital stocks surged after the ruling. Hos- pital Corporation of Amer- ica jumped more than 6 percent and Tenet Health- care shot up 71⁄2 percent.
The Supreme Court deci- sion is a huge victory for the administration of President Barack Obama and his landmark health-reform law, which was designed to signifi- cantly reduce the number of Americans without health cov- erage.
"This is a victory for com- mon sense and for all Ameri- can families," said Rep. Nancy Pelosi of California, the Democratic leader in the U.S. House of Representa- tives. "It is long past time for
Republicans to abandon their assault on the new-found health security that the Af- fordable Care Act is providing millions and millions of Amer- icans across the country."
Conservative Justice An- tonin Scalia, in his dissent to the decision, called the ma- jority decision "absurd." He wrote that Roberts' opinion "changes the usual rules of statutory interpretation for the sake of the Affordable Care Act."
"It rewrites the law to make the tax credits available every- where," said Scalia in his dis- sent, which he read from the bench. "We should start call- ing this law SCOTUSCare." Scalia was joined in his dis- sent by justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito.
Republican Congress Passes President’s Trade Bill
After weeks of legislative clashes Congress handed President Obama a major policy victory Wednesday, giv- ing him authority to rapidly conclude a Pacific trade accord vehemently opposed by many in his party.
Bucking political tradition, the Democratic president re- lied on his Republican rivals to help realize the top economic priority of his second term: creating a 12-nation trans-Pa- cific free-trade area aimed at opening new markets for US exports in countries like Japan, Chile, Australia and Vietnam.
The President’s own party has rebelled, worried about a repeat of the 1990s North American Free Trade Agree- ment, which led to large num- bers of manufacturing jobs going to Mexico, where labor costs were dramatically lower. But after a major trade pack- age including trade promotion authority (TPA) stalled in Con- gress this month, the White House and Republican leaders secured the necessary votes to advance at least the TPA meas- ure.
President Obama speaks Wednesday after Congress passed the 12 nation trans-Pa- cific free trade bill.
The Senate voted 60 to 38, with 15 pro-trade Democrats joining all but five Republicans to approve the measure.
TPA expands President Obama's powers to negotiate the Trans-Pacific Partnership and other trade deals and present them to Congress for an up-or-down vote, without lawmakers able to pick apart the accord.
The Senate also passed a bill reinstating a worker aid pro- gram known as Trade Adjust- ment Assistance (TAA), and on trade benefits for develop- ing nations, mainly in Africa.
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