HARRISBURG, Pa.: Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf kept up pressure to keep the 2010 federal health care law covering 1 million-plus Pennsylvanians, using his office to mount a vigorous public defense of it as efforts unfold in Congress to repeal it.
Wolf is in a prime position to help exert public pressure on Pennsylvania’s big delegation of Republicans in Congress. Only Texas and Florida send more Republicans to Congress than Pennsylvania’s 14, and only a couple of other Democratic governors hail from a state with a Republican congressional delegation of significant size.
Wolf’s administration has tried to make the case for the law in at least a half-dozen events in recent weeks, while Wolf’s public events on fighting Pennsylvania’s wave of heroin and prescription drug addiction often touch on the law’s crucial coverage of addiction treatment services. It also issued a 105-page report detailing the broad reach of the law’s coverage in Pennsylvania.
The latest event joined three of Wolf’s Cabinet secretaries with people who had their own story to tell about how the law known as Obamacare or the Affordable Care Act had changed their life.
“The medical bills were phenomenal,” said Carl Goulden of Littlestown, describing the aftermath of two major heart attacks he suffered several years ago that landed him in a coma. “The ACA protected me.”
Anna Trace, of Chambersburg, said she has felt protected by the law’s requirement that insurance companies cover those with pre-existing conditions, and that her daughter, stricken with multiple sclerosis, has gotten insurance under its Medicaid expansion.
Michael Simmons, of Willow Street, told how the law made health insurance more affordable for him through the Healthcare.gov marketplace, enabling him to quit his job and start his own businesses. Vini Portzline, of Harrisburg, said the addiction treatment
