President Obama declared on Monday that he was confident that the Supreme Court would uphold his health care law, saying it would be an “unprecedented, extraordinary” step to overturn legislation passed by a “strong majority of a democratically elected Congress.”
Mr. Obama, in his first public comments since the Supreme Court heard oral arguments last week to strike down the 2010 Affordable Care Act, said the law’s constitutionality had been affirmed by legal scholars across the political spectrum, as well as in rulings by conservative appeals court judges.
But the president also put his defense of the law in real-world terms, arguing that the legislation had already brought affordable health care to 2.5 million young people and reduced the cost of prescription drugs for millions of older people.
“This is not an abstract argument,” Mr. Obama said at a news conference in the Rose Garden, after meeting with the leaders of Canada and Mexico. “People’s lives are affected by the lack of availability of health care, the unaffordability of health care, or their inability to get health care because of pre-existing conditions.”
“There is not only an economic element to this and a legal element to this, but there is a human element to this,” he said.
Mr. Obama also challenged the Supreme Court justices not to practice the judicial activism that many conservative legal scholars often lament in the court, saying a negative ruling would amount to “an unelected group of people” overturning “a duly constituted and passed law.”
Mr. Obama was flanked by President Felipe Calderón of Mexico and Prime Minister Stephen Harper of Canada. The three leaders took questions on issues like deepening trade ties between the three big North American countries, and American efforts to help Mexico combat drug-related violence.
Mr. Obama said the United States needed to help Mexico both as a good neighbor and out of self-interest because rampant drug-related violence south of the border could affect the security of the whole continent.
During the Supreme Court hearing last week, the aggressive tenor of the questions from the justices suggested that the law’s central provision – the individual mandate – was in jeopardy. The justices appeared to be looking for practical solutions if they struck down this part of the law. A ruling is expected in June.
Mr. Obama, however, on Monday argued that the individual mandate was crucial to broadening insurance coverage. “I think the justices should understand that in the absence of an individual mandate, you cannot have a mechanism to insure that people with pre-existing conditions can get health care,” he said.
The president had not commented publicly on the legal arguments, which were conducted while he was in South Korea for a nuclear security summit meeting. But the president read a summary of the oral arguments, administration officials said, and has discussed the case with his White House counsel.
The White House has insisted it will prevail in the legal challenge, and has said it is not developing contingency plans if the law is struck down. While a ruling against the law would constitute a major defeat for the president in an election year, it is not clear how it would affect his re-election effort.
A senior administration official said on Monday that while public opinion toward the law was split, only Republicans supported repealing the law altogether. Another senior official noted that Mr. Obama himself initially opposed the individual mandate, before concluding that it would help curb cost increases in health care.