“Those of you who live in countries that already have universal health care are trying to figure out what’s the controversy here,” former President Barack Obama said. Obama calls constant GOP efforts to repeal Obamacare 'aggravating'

NEW YORK — The post-presidency by subtweet continues.

As President Donald Trump attended sessions at the United Nations, former President Barack Obama stood in the theater of the Time Warner Center across town on Wednesday afternoon, urging people who share his worldview not to give up building an interconnected world, supporting the Paris climate accords, resisting xenophobia and, in the near-term, fighting to save Obamacare.


In an appearance at the Gates Foundation’s Goalkeepers event, Obama focused on the revived fight over Obamacare, as Republicans push toward a vote in the Senate on their latest attempt to repeal his signature health care achievement.

“Those of you who live in countries that already have universal health care are trying to figure out what’s the controversy here,” Obama said, jabbing at “people trying to undo that progress for the 50th or 60th time” with a bill that raises costs.

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“It is aggravating,” Obama said, “and all of this being done without any demonstrable economic or actuarial or common-sense rationale, it frustrates.”

He went on: “It’s certainly frustrating to have to mobilize every couple months to keep our leaders from inflicting real human suffering on our constituents.”

Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, one of the Republicans pushing the latest effort to undo Obamacare, said after Obama's speech that it would be "unrealistic" to expect the former president to acknowledge problems with his namesake law.

"It’s no surprise President Obama opposes sending money and power back to the states and closer to where the patients live," Graham said in a statement. "Obamacare was designed with the exact opposite goal in mind — which is to consolidate health care power and decision-making in Washington."

Obama also pointed to the Paris climate deal, which Trump has said he’ll back out of and which Obama referred to as “a small agreement to save the planet."

Obama didn’t say Trump’s name. But just a day after the current president’s speech to the UN General Assembly, in which Trump threatened to step back from international coalitions and diplomatic solutions, Obama urged reform, not unraveling.

He mocked those who attacked his own turn toward international coalitions “as if that was an expression of weakness. I believe that the United States is an indispensable nation and that many of the initiatives and much of the progress we made could not have been done unless we underwrote those efforts.”

“You have to start with the premise and believe that multilateral institutions are important. It doesn’t make you less patriotic to believe that,” Obama said. “You just have to have some sense.”

He warned against “the rise of nationalism, xenophobia, and a politics that says it’s not 'we' but ‘us and them’ — a politics that threatens to turn good people away from the kind of collective action that has always driven human progress.”

Bolstering countries around the world reduces the number of refugees and others seeking aid from the United States, Obama said: "It’s not like they’re dying to get on a dingy and float across the ocean if the country where they’re born and they loved was functioning.”

A year ago, in his final speech to the United Nations as president but at the height of a campaign Hillary Clinton looked poised to win, Obama delivered a similar warning to the world — railing against nationalism, wall building and turning to strongmen.

To Americans, he said then, “we better strive harder to set a better example at home.”

Now Obama continues to find himself, in his post-presidency, a voice of opposition to Trump. Obama is highly critical of his successor, but never directly in public, conscious of the tradition of deference among ex-presidents and aware that any word from him could set Trump off in the opposite direction.

In office, one of Obama’s reliable routines was playing media critic. In an aside on Wednesday, he sketched out the beginnings of a vision of what to do about what he decried is a move away from informed, fact-based, rational decisions among voters and politicians.

“Stories and visual representations of progress can go viral. There’s a hunger for it, it’s just that we don’t systematically think about it,” Obama said. “How do we build a digital platform whereby people can go to find out what’s happening that’s moving progress on issues and that activates them?”

“I’m very interested in how online communities can move offline," he said. "How this incredible power to convene through hashtags and tweets eventually leads to people meeting each other and talking. I think that we have not fully tapped that as a way of spreading the word about progress that has been made.”

Making his usual point of embracing active citizenship, Obama said young people especially can’t give up and must get involved with politics, rather than believing that they can effectively work around the government — a big theme of the work that he’ll be doing though his foundation, which is launching with a young leaders summit in Chicago at the end of next month.

Obama said he knew many people who supported him and his politics were depressed by Trump, but he encouraged them to embrace "that spirit that says — I guess to quote myself — 'Yes we can.' That spirit, rather than the spirit of despair.”

“What a glorious thing it is to be responsible for saving the world,” Obama said. “That’s your responsibility.”