Obama makes moral case for preserving his health care law “Five years in, what we’re talking about is no longer just a law."

Four words in the law could unravel Obamacare in the Supreme Court. So President Barack Obama is marshaling his own numbers — and an unusual moral weight — to stress the achievements of his health overhaul law.

Addressing the Catholic Health Association on Tuesday, Obama spoke about the 100 years it’s taken to reform health care in the United States, and the millions of people Obamacare has helped over its five years of implementation.


“This is now part of the fabric of how we care for one another,” Obama said. “This is health care in America.”

Peppered with religious and historical references, Obama’s speech was part victory lap and part plea: an assertion of the law’s success, even as the courts and the Republican-controlled Congress threaten to dismantle the overhaul.

Saying broadening access to health care had been the goal of historic leaders “from Teddy Roosevelt to Teddy Kennedy,” Obama asserted that health care is “not a privilege, it is a right.”

As many as 6.4 million people are at risk of losing the subsidies that make their health insurance affordable if the government loses in the high court. Known as King v. Burwell, the case considers whether the subsidies, based on the wording of the law, can legally be distributed to customers in states that use the federal exchange on Healthcare.gov instead of building their own state-based marketplaces.

The case has huge practical and political implications. The administration has consistently expressed confidence that it will prevail but said there’s no administrative fix if it loses.

Congressional Republicans, meanwhile, have said they don’t want to see Americans lose their subsidies, but they’ve struggled to coalesce around a single alternative. On Monday, a top Senate Republican once again rejected the prospect of making the simple language tweak that Obama would like to see.

“Let’s be clear: If the Supreme Court rules against the administration, Congress will not pass a so-called one-sentence fake fix,” said Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), ruling out simply clarifying the section in question that talks about subsidies for exchanges “established by the state.”

Though he did not refer directly to Republicans, Obama called attempts to roll back the law “deeply cynical,” especially in light of the law’s successes, which include a record low percentage of uninsured Americans.

“The rugged individualism that defines America has always been bound by a set of shared values, an enduring sense that we are in this together,” Obama said. “That we have an obligation to put ourselves in our neighbor’s shoes, and to see the common humanity in each other.”

The future of Obamacare is also playing out on the campaign trail. Most of the Republican presidential candidates have whipped up crowds by pledging to repeal the law, but have not offered full blueprints of what a replacement might look like. Hillary Clinton has strongly supported the law through various tweets and has warned of the dangers of unraveling the legislation.

And Republicans are already gearing up to pin their persistent critiques of Obamacare on Clinton.

“The President’s spin doesn’t change the fact ObamaCare is a deeply flawed law that no one read before Democrats rammed it through Congress on a highly partisan basis,” said Republican National Committee spokesman Michael Short, in a statement. “Whether it’s skyrocketing costs, cancelled insurance plans, or the law’s legal issues, the problems caused by ObamaCare rest squarely at the feet of this president, Hillary Clinton and the rest of the Democrat party.”

Obama’s frustration with the court was clear on Monday, when he said during a news conference in Germany that the King case “probably shouldn’t even have been taken up.”

On Tuesday, Obama tried to transcend the legal issues and political debate and instead focus on what the law has accomplished.

“There are outcomes that we can calculate and enumerate — the number of newly insured families, the number of lives saved — those numbers all add up to success in this reform effort,” Obama said. “But there are also outcomes that are harder to calculate,” whether it was bankruptcies avoided, the ability of a parent to bring a child to the doctor, or a wife being able to take a walk with her husband after recovering from an illness. He continued, “Is there any greater measure of life and liberty and the pursuit of happiness than those simple pleasures that are afforded by good health?”

The audience for the speech had special resonance for Obama. The Catholic Health Association, which was celebrating its 100th anniversary, is led by Sister Carol Keehan. The nun helped round up Catholic support for the Affordable Care Act when it was opposed by bishops who were concerned about funding for abortion.

“I don’t know if this is appropriate, but I just told Sister Carol, I love her,” Obama quipped after she introduced him.“We would not have gotten the Affordable Care Act done had it not been for her.”