House Democrats Propose Expanding Obamacare While Trump Administration Tries To Overturn It

A day after the Trump Administration declared its support for overturning the Obamacare in court, House Democrats proposed strengthening and adding more benefits to the decade-old law.

“They have a new message: People don’t deserve quality health care and insurance companies should discriminate against people with pre-existing conditions,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif) said. Pelosi noted that changes need to be made to Obamacare in-order to prevent the “”sabotage” of the health care law” by the Trump Administration.

In the 2012 Supreme Court decision of National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) v. Sebelius, one of the major provisions of the Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare, was struck down as unconstitutional. The court’s ruling gave states the option of whether to expand Medicare or not, but preserved the bulk of the law.

Last year, the GOP-controlled Congress eliminated the “individual mandate” requiring people to buy health insurance. District Court Judge Reed O’Connor from the Northern District of Texas argued that the health care law requires citizens to purchase insurance or, pay a penalty, and if the Congress eventually eliminated the mandate, the act is therefore unconstitutional.

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Obamacare now covers over 20 million Americas. It protects people who have pre-existing health conditions and allows young adults to remain on their parent’s health insurance. The GOP bill, which passed last year, allows for cheaper policies with no fixed benefits, which have earned the nickname “junk plans” by the Democratics.

Nonetheless, Trump remains outwardly confident on his new healthcare push. “The Republican Party will soon be known as the party of health care,” he wrote on Twitter this week,

The Republican Party will become “The Party of Healthcare!”

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 26, 2019