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Health & Fitness

Health Care on the Line

The Affordable Care Act provides needed benefits to so many Americans that it's hard to understand why opponents want to destroy it.

This week the United States Supreme Court is hearing arguments on the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act. 

These legal challenges are one element of a massive coordinated effort by Republicans and their conservative backers to repeal or undermine a law that has so much to offer Americans. 

Two years ago President Obama achieved what no other president had accomplished for decades – comprehensive reforms that improve access to affordable health care, and end the worst insurance company abuses. No longer will insurers be able to deny coverage based on pre-existing conditions, charge women more than men for the same coverage or place a limit on essential health benefits.

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This law has already helped millions of middle-class families, seniors and young people receive quality affordable health care – health care they would not otherwise have been able to receive. And it has saved lives. 

President Obama kept his word and because of his tireless commitment to health care reform, Medicare is stronger for 47 million Americans, women can get free life-saving preventive services such as mammograms, children won’t lose their coverage just because they were born with pre-existing conditions like asthma and an additional 2.5 million young adults now have insurance because they can stay on their parents’ plans until they turn 26. As a total package, President Obama’s health care reform will even help reduce the federal deficit.

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Why the opponents of the Affordable Care Act would want to take these benefits away from the American people – and increase the federal deficit in the process – is hard to understand.

Thankfully, Americans can count on President Obama and Democrats to stand up for them and for access to affordable health care.

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