The Supreme Court's 6-3 decision to allow healthcare subsidies to continue nationwide brought strong responses from Republican presidential candidates on Thursday, with Ben Carson promising to "work even harder" to make certain that President Barack Obama's successor "will repeal and replace Obamacare."
"I am deeply disappointed by the Supreme Court’s ruling today," Carson, a retired pediatric neurosurgeon, said in a statement. "Obamacare fundamentally increases the power of the government over the people and healthcare providers.
"While I resent what the court has done, it only causes me to work even harder to make sure the next president will repeal and replace Obamacare with sensible consumer-empowering solutions that remove the government from the patient-doctor relationship," he said.
"Those of us who pledge to repeal Obamacare must redouble our efforts and not waste time and energy mourning today's ruling."
Presidential candidate Donald Trump called the law a "total disaster" and said that his GOP rival Jeb Bush pushed his brother, former President George W. Bush, to appoint Chief Justice John Roberts to the court. Roberts wrote the majority opinion, and also was part of the decision upholding the Affordable Care Act in 2012.
When people vote for Jeb Bush "they ought to remember that he was pushing Roberts, and Roberts is the one -- they might as well call it the Roberts Obamacare because that's honestly what it is," Trump said.
Should he make it to the Oval Office, Trump said he would repeal and replace Obamacare with "something far better that would be less expensive and a lot better. It's a horrible thing. Deductibles are through the roof. You don't get to use it because the deductibles are so high."
Other 2016 GOP hopefuls have issued statements:
Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush: "I am disappointed by today’s Supreme Court ruling in the King v. Burwell case, but this decision is not the end of the fight against Obamacare. This fatally flawed law imposes job-killing mandates, causes spending in Washington to skyrocket by $1.7 trillion, raises taxes by $1 trillion and drives up health care costs."
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker: "[This] means Republicans in the House and Senate must redouble their efforts to repeal and replace this destructive and costly law. Workers have lost hours because of new costs faced by their employers, people have lost their insurance and cannot afford the dramatic premium and fee increases."
Florida Sen. Marco Rubio: The court has "once again erred in trying to correct the mistakes made by President Obama and Congress in forcing Obamacare on the American people."
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz: "Today’s decision in King v. Burwell is judicial activism, plain and simple. For nakedly political reasons, the Supreme Court willfully ignored the words that Congress wrote, and instead read into the law their preferred policy outcome. These judges have joined with President Obama in harming millions of Americans. Unelected judges have once again become legislators, and bad ones at that. They are lawless, and they hide their prevarication in legalese."
Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, on Twitter:
Carly Fiorina, former Hewlett-Packard CEO: The court "once again rewrote Obamacare to save this deeply flawed law, despite the plain text and in the face of overwhelming evidence that the law is not working for the majority of Americans."
Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry: "It was never up to the Supreme Court to save us from Obamacare. We need leadership that understands a heavy-handed, one-size-fits-all policy does nothing to help health outcomes for Americans."
Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum on Twitter:
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie on Twitter:
Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal: "President Obama would like this to be the end of the debate on Obamacare, but it isn’t. The debate will continue because the law has failed to accomplish its prime objective: Containing health care costs."
South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham: "This case was brought before the Supreme Court because President Obama and his Democratic allies in Congress rammed through their hastily and deeply flawed legislation to create Obamacare, apparently without even proofreading their own bill. The result has been a disaster from Day One."
Former New York Gov. George Pataki on Twitter:
Sen. Rand Paul warned that the ruling will leave Senate Republicans without the leverage necessary to negotiate changes with Obama to his signature healthcare law.
"I would still like to reform it and change it and give patients back more choices on whether they can choose which doctor or which insurance plan, legalize competition and legalize inexpensive insurance again. But it makes it hard because we don't have the leverage," the Kentucky Republican told CNN's Wolf Blitzer.
"If we had the leverage where the president had to revisit this because part of it had been struck down, then we would have the leverage to force the president to revisit it."
Further, as a physician, Paul said he thinks the Supreme Court missed an opportunity.
"I think we made a mistake," the GOP presidential candidate said. "If they would have ruled and adhered to the literal nature of the law, maybe Congress would have had a chance to take up Obamacare again and try to make it less bad, or fix the parts of it that are causing so many problems in our society."
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