Harris, Biden stress importance of health care

U.S. Vice President-elect Kamala Harris says that each vote for President-elect Joe Biden was in support of the Affordable Care Act he helped craft during the Obama administration.

During remarks Tuesday in Wilmington, Delaware, Harris said that Biden "won the election decisively," and that "every vote for Joe Biden was a statement that health care in America should be a right, not a privilege."

Harris also noted that, if the Affordable Care Act is dismantled, "communities of color would be hit particularly hard ... because they are at a greater risk for preexisting conditions," as well as complications from the coronavirus.

Harris spoke ahead of remarks from Biden and following oral arguments in the U.S. Supreme Court. Earlier Tuesday, justices heard oral arguments from opponents of the health care program, arguing the 10-year-old statute was rendered unconstitutional in its entirety when Congress dialed down to zero a penalty on those remaining uninsured.

President-elect Joe Biden says that the Republican-backed challenge to the Affordable Care Act in the Supreme Court is "cruel and needlessly divisive." But he's promising that, regardless of the outcome of that lawsuit, he will enact reforms to expand coverage when he's in office next January.

During remarks Tuesday in Wilmington, Delaware, Biden warned that if the GOP-backed lawsuit is successful millions of Americans would lose health care coverage during the coronavirus pandemic. He characterized the lawsuit as an "effort to bypass the will of the American people, the verdict of the courts in the past, the judgments of Congress," noting that the ACA had weathered previous court challenges and legislative efforts to dismantle it.