President urges recalcitrant state lawmakers to accept Affordable Care Act assistance to provide healthcare for those on low incomes

This article is more than 5 years old

This article is more than 5 years old

Less than one week after the US supreme court vindicated his healthcare law, Barack Obama embarked on a push calling on recalcitrant states to expand access to Medicaid for low-income Americans.

The president made his pitch during a stop on Wednesday in Nashville, Tennessee – a base for the country’s healthcare industry – urging lawmakers to find ways to make additional fixes the system now that the court did away with the last significant legal challenge to the Affordable Care Act.

“I’m feeling pretty good about how healthcare is going,” Obama said during a Q&A held at a local elementary school. “With the supreme court case now behind us, I’m hoping now what we can do is now focus on what we can do to make it better.”

Last week, the supreme court upheld the healthcare law’s insurance subsidy program, ruling that subsidies can be offered by both state- and federally run exchanges. The decision marked a critical – and perhaps final – blow to conservatives who have sought to dismantle the Affordable Care Act since its passage in 2012.

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Obama touted the law’s impact on Wednesday, pointing to the millions of Americans who have gained access to insurance and historically slow growth in healthcare spending.

But he lamented that millions of Americans were being deprived of the benefits, criticizing in particular the nearly two dozen, largely Republican-controlled states that have rejected the option under the healthcare law to expand Medicaid, a health care program for the poor.

“Not all states have taken advantage of the options that are out there,” Obama said. “Our hope is that more of them do.”

It was no coincidence that he chose to make his case in Tennessee, where the GOP-controlled state legislature refused a Medicaid expansion even though it would cover more than 200,000 of its residents and has support from the state’s Republican governor, Bill Haslam.

Obama urged state lawmakers to “open your hearts and think about the people here in Tennessee who are working hard and struggling and just need a little bit of help”.

“It is unfortunate that getting this thing done got so political,” he said. “Washington is kind of a crazy place. But that doesn’t mean every place has got to be crazy.”

To underscore the impact the law has had on many Americans, Obama brought with him on Air Force One a woman who shared her healthcare story with him in a 2009 letter urging the president to fight for healthcare reform.

Natoma Canfield, a cancer survivor from Ohio, had written at the time that she was forced to get rid of her health insurance when she was unable to afford her monthly premium.

Josh Earnest, the White House press secretary, told reporters en route to Tennessee that Canfield was “a living, breathing symbol” of the healthcare law’s consequences.

Obama also picked up a Nashville woman on his way to the event who introduced him and recounted how she was able to gain access through the Affordable Care Act to the healthcare coverage she needed to treat breast cancer.

“I never imagined in my wildest dreams that anyone would read it, let alone him,” Bryant said in her introduction. “I am living proof of a president who listens and cares about the American people.”