Barack Obama reminded people that Saturday is the final day to enroll for Obamacare in 2019 and claimed that the significance of the ruling has been overstated.
READ MORE: 'Obamacare Struck Down as Unconstitutional Disaster' — Trump
“You might have heard about a federal court decision on a Republican lawsuit trying to strike down the Affordable Care Act in its entirety. […] As this decision makes its way through the courts, which will take months, if not years, the law remains in place and will likely stay that way,” the former US president wrote on his Twitter account.
Earlier this week US District Judge Reed O’Connor dismissed Obama’s 2012 health care initiative after 20 states, including Texas, argued that they had been hurt by the increase in the number of people utilizing state-backed insurance.
“The remainder of the ACA is non-severable from the individual mandate, meaning that the Act must be invalidated in whole,” O’Connor, whose District Court is based in Texas, wrote in his a 55-page opinion, cited by Bloomberg.
Trump immediately tweeted that the ruling struck Obamacare down as an “unconstitutional disaster” and called for Congress to pass a “strong” health care bill that would cover pre-existing conditions – an issue that Democrats have criticized Republicans for not paying enough attention to.
“A lot of good people are fighting to ensure that nothing about your care will change. The ACA protects your pre-existing conditions, no matter how you get your insurance,” Obama said Saturday, claiming that Republicans will “keep trying [to undo the act] in the courts, even when it puts people’s pre-existing conditions coverage at risk.”
California and several other states which support ObamaCare are likely to make an appeal to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit to oppose the new ruling.
Obama signed the Affordable Care Act in 2010, and most of the provisions took effect in 2014. The healthcare law has faced fierce opposition from the Republican Party. President Donald Trump has pledged to repeal and replace Obamacare since the early days of his administration. However, all attempts to achieve that goal have so far failed in Congress.