Daily US Times: President-elect Joe Biden has vowed to defend the Affordable Care Act, popularly known as Obamacare, the public health insurance scheme passed when he was vice-president, as the Supreme Court considers a case attempting to strike down the law.
Mr Biden said the court effort was an attempt by “far-right ideologues” to undermine access to healthcare.
The comments come as the US faces an unrelenting Covid-19 pandemic.
Democrats made protecting Obamacare a key issue in the election held on November 3.
In a speech where he addressed the Supreme Court case that opened with oral arguments on Tuesday, Biden said: “This case represents the latest attempt by the far-right ideologues to do what they have repeatedly failed to do for a long time.”
There have been numerous attempts by President Trump, a Republican, to “erase the law” – that have been rejected by Congress and in previous court cases, Mr Biden said.
“Now, in the middle of a deadly pandemic that has affected more than 10 million Americans….these ideologues are once again trying to strip health coverage away from the American people,” Joe Biden added.
Healthcare has been a key issue for voters even before the coronavirus pandemic and a key part of the Democratic platform, helping the party win a majority in the House of Representatives, the lower chamber of the Congress in the 2018 mid-term elections.
The Affordable Care Act (ACA) has remained popular overall. According to a Kaiser Family Foundation poll in October that reported 55% of Americans viewed it favourably.
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