Biden visiting Lancaster to talk affordable health care

Jun. 24--Former Vice President Joe Biden will bring his campaign to Lancaster on Thursday to talk about affordable health care and meet with families who have benefited under the Affordable Care Act.

The presumptive Democratic presidential nominee's event is slated to begin at 2:45 p.m. However, his campaign did not detail where in Lancaster the event would be held, and media access is limited because of restrictions imposed after the coronavirus outbreak.

"Vice President Biden will highlight the need to protect and build on the ACA as the Trump Administration files a brief with the Supreme Court in favor of invalidating the landmark law in its entirety," stated a news release from Biden's campaign.

Pennsylvania is expected to be a key state in Biden's effort to prevent President Donald Trump from winning a second term in office.

National polling has shown the former vice president's bid opening a significant lead over Trump.

In a New York Times/Siena College poll of registered voters published Wednesday, Biden held a 14-point lead over Trump, The New York Times reported.

But Biden's edge is substantially less pronounced in Pennsylvania, which Trump won in 2016 by less than 1%. Biden led Trump by just three percentage points in the state in an NBC/Change Research poll released this past week.

The ACA has been a cornerstone of Biden's campaign, as it was signed into law in 2010, while he served under former President Barack Obama. The Democrat often invokes his relationship with Obama on the campaign trail.

Health care has become an important subject amid the coronavirus pandemic.

The ACA created a health insurance marketplace and was meant to reduce the cost of insurance through tax credits and cost-sharing reductions for those who qualify.

But the act has drawn the ire of Republicans since its inception, and Trump came into office with a pledge of repealing the law.

The administration has been unable to do so thus far despite having a Republican congressional majority in both houses for Trump's first two years, but Congress did remove the individual mandate -- which penalized those without insurance -- through the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act

Progressives to the left of Biden, on the other hand, have criticized the ACA for not going far enough. Several prominent Democrats, including former presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., have instead pushed for universal health care.

-- Logan Hullinger can be reached at [email protected] or via Twitter at @LoganHullYD.

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