Kerry: Conservative Roberts Court Upholds Health Care Reform

Statement

Senator John Kerry (D-Mass.), Senior Member of the Finance Committee, today released a statement lauding the Supreme Court of the United States for upholding the Affordable Care Act:

"This is an important day for the Supreme Court and an important day for Americans who need affordable health care coverage. But I hope this will also be an important day for our politics and our discourse. For the past three years, opponents of health reform did everything they could to distort and deceive. They tried to scare the American public with outright lies about "death panels' and "socialized medicine.' When that didn't work, they came up with a new strategy: claim that the individual mandate the Republican Party itself had invented was unconstitutional. Today, the conservative Roberts Court put an end to that debate. Those who have sought to demonize health reform need to put an end to their scare tactics. This needs to begin a new day, where the test is not what you can oppose but what you can propose. Enough time has been wasted in the United States Congress on pointless repeal votes designed to score political points. Too much time has been wasted on a legislative temper tantrum. We need to get back to the business of implementing a constitutional law that will lower health care costs for everyone and give 33 million Americans the health coverage they deserve."

Source