The 2010 health care law is here to stay, President Obama told cheering crowds at a Jacksonville, Fla., campaign rally on Thursday. Florida Gov. Rick Scott, a Republican, has vowed not to implement the health care law, and Florida’s large number of uninsured residents and Medicare beneficiaries make health care a particularly contentious issue in the state.
“The Supreme Court has spoken. We are moving forward. We are going to help people who are working hard, to make sure that just because they have an illness in their family, they don’t lose everything,” Obama said. The health care law guarantees protection from an insurance company's fine print, allows young people to stay on their parents health insurance for longer, and lowers prescription drug costs for some seniors, Obama said.
“We’re not going to roll that back, we’re not going to re-fight that fight for the next four years. We need to move forward, not backwards,” Obama said.
The president also criticized presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney’s plan for Medicare reform. Under Romney’s plan, seniors would pay more for Medicare “just so millionaires and billionaires can pay less in taxes,” Obama said.
“My plan is to squeeze more money out of the health care system by reducing waste,” Obama said, and to raise revenue by returning to Clinton-era tax rates to reduce the deficit.
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