Obama seeks boost from health care ruling

WASHINGTON — President Obama is aiming to use the momentum from a recent Supreme Court victory for his health care law to change the conversation from talk about undoing his signature domestic achievement to talk about how to improve it.

Just over 80 percent of people under age 65 had health insurance when Obama enacted the law in 2010.

[...] the share has risen to about 90 percent.

[...] achieving the goal largely depends on roughly 20 states, most led by Republican governors and including some heavily populated states like Florida and Texas, that have refused Obama’s offer of billions of dollars in federal money to pay to expand their Medicaid programs.

“If we can get some governors that have been holding out and resisting expanding Medicaid primarily for political reasons to think about what they can do for their citizens who don’t have health insurance but could get it very easily if state governments acted, then we could see even more improvement over time,” Obama said at the White House on Tuesday.

Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam, a Republican, has proposed extending Medicaid coverage to 280,000 low-income state residents, but the plan failed during a special session of the Republican-controlled Legislature earlier this year.