Biden Calls for Protection of Obamacare as Supreme Court Hears Arguments

President-elect Joe Biden promised Tuesday to defend the Affordable Care Act, hours after the Trump administration argued before the U.S. Supreme Court that the law should be struck down.

“These ideologues are once again try to strip health coverage away from millions of people,” he said of Republican lawmakers at a speech in Wilmington, Delaware.

He said his incoming administration would start in January to work with Congress to increase protections for coverage.

“We will not abandon you. That is a promise,” Biden said.

Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh both suggested during arguments on Tuesday that they aren’t prepared to strike down the entire law even if Republican challengers succeed in invalidating the mandate, which requires people to acquire insurance.

Biden promised as a candidate to protect the law, also known as Obamacare, and to build on it by adding an option to buy into a government-run plan. He called the lawsuit before the Supreme Court on Tuesday an imminent threat to millions of Americans at a time when health care was most needed.

Some 20 million people could lose their health insurance and more than 135 million Americans with pre-existing conditions, including those who have had Covid-19, could lose their legal protections, according to estimates from the liberal Center for American Progress.

More than 10.1 million people in the U.S. have been infected with Covid-19 and more than 238,000 have died.

President Donald Trump’s administration joined Republican-led states in challenging the law, which the GOP has been trying to dismantle since it was enacted in 2010. The House of Representatives and a group of Democratic-controlled states are defending the law

Republicans are hoping that the Supreme Court’s 6-3 conservative majority, with new Justice Amy Coney Barrett, will strike down the ACA’s individual mandate to have health insurance. The Supreme Court upheld the provision in 2012 when Chief Justice John Roberts said it was a legitimate use of Congress’s taxing power, because it included a penalty on people who lacked insurance policies.

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