Former Vice President Joe Biden came out swinging against Republican efforts to repeal ObamaCare Monday, accusing Republicans of wanting to “roll back” health care for all and saying their efforts should “make your blood boil.”
Biden, who considered running for president in 2016 and is frequently floated as a possible 2020 Democratic candidate, wrote in an opinion piece for the Washington Post that Americans all over the country have told him that they been given “peace of mind” from the Affordable Care Act.
“They told me that because when the ACA became law and health-care coverage was extended to millions of people, it meant we had finally decided, as a nation, that health care is a right for all and not a privilege for the few,” he said.
He cites Americans he met with across the country but does not mention if any Americans he met said anything about soaring health care premiums, or the inability of many Americans to keep their doctor as was promised by President Obama.
He says he disagrees with Republican claims that the GOP bill currently in the Senate strengthens and secures Medicaid. Instead, he says the bill tries to “deal with opioid addiction on the cheap, eviscerates the ACA’s Medicaid expansion and guts the ACA’s promise that care like maternity and mental health and substance-use disorder services must be part of any viable health coverage system.”
He goes on to accuse Republicans of wanting to “drag us back to a time…when Americans could be denied basic health care because they were unable to afford it.” It is not clear to which part of the bill Biden is referring.
“That’s the reality of where we are today and it’s enough to make your blood boil,” he says.
The closest Biden comes to dealing with criticisms of ObamaCare is when he admits that the law “isn’t perfect, but the choices we made when designing the law flowed from a commitment to provide the best possible care to the most people.”
Again, he does not directly deal with criticisms of soaring premiums or the “if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor” falsehood pushed and later abandoned by the Obama administration.
Biden goes on to say that the Republican bill “can’t be fixed,” adding, “By denying that all Americans have a right to health care, it’s fundamentally flawed.”
“If Republican leadership wants to improve the ACA, let’s first come to an agreement that everyone should have health coverage. Then, based on that premise, let’s have a debate about how best to improve care and reduce costs,” he says. “Let’s again make the commitment that in America, health care is a right for all, not a privilege for the wealthy.”
The Senate bill is currently on hold while Sen. John McCain recovers from surgery for a blood clot. It is unclear if the bill has enough votes to pass the Senate.
Adam Shaw is a Breitbart News politics reporter based in New York. Follow Adam on Twitter: @AdamShawNY
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