President Barack Obama hailed the Supreme Court decision on his landmark healthcare legislation Thursday as a victory for the American people, stressing that it would lead to lower costs overall and more certainty in how it will be implemented moving forward.
Speaking more confidently than ever before about what he expects the Affordable Care Act, dubbed Obamacare by critics, will do for Americans, the president said, “It should be clear by now that I didn’t do this because it was good politics, I did it because it was good policy.”
“Whatever the politics, today’s decision was a victory for people all over this country whose lives are more secure because of this law and the Supreme Court’s decision to uphold it,” Obama said, choosing his words carefully, avoiding jabs at Republicans, including presidential campaign rival Mitt Romney, to repeal it.
The president ticked off a number of provisions in the law he said would improve the lives of all Americans, including those with pre-existing conditions who cannot be denied coverage and young adults and college students who will be allowed to remain on their parents’ health plans.
“I know that there will be a lot of discussion today about the politics of all of this, about who won and who lost. That is how these things tend to be viewed here in Washington. But that discussion completely misses the point,” the president said, as he talked about the specifics of what he set out to do when the law was passed in 2010 by the then Democratic-controlled Congress.
“The highest court in the land has now spoken,” Obama said, promising to continue implementing the law but also working to “improve on it where we can.”
In closing, he called on his critics not to “re-fight the political battles of two years ago” when law passed, but to move forward with him in working to create jobs and improve the economy.
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