Obama: It was fourteen years ago today

[speak easy]

Barack Obama
@BarackObama
Fourteen years ago today, I signed the Affordable Care Act into law.

Afterwards, one Republican member of the House called the ACA the “most dangerous piece of legislation ever passed in Congress.” Another predicted the country would “never recover from it.”

But then something else happened: it actually worked.

Link to tweet

[Phoenix61]

1. I am so grateful for the ACA.

I, along with every other cancer survivor, would never have been able to get insurance without it.

[WarGamer]

2. big GIANT K&R

[mnmoderatedem]

3. "it actually worked"

and repubs still talk about repealing it despite it's popularity among the public.

Do your worst, GOP.

[CTyankee]

4. So nice to see you, Mr. President!

sigh

[Hekate]

5. It was and is a BFD, as Joe so vividly pointed out

[COL Mustard]

6. And the republicans who were so outraged by Joe's epithet

Have absolutely no problem with a pussy grabber as president.

[bmichaelh]

7. ACA has saved me--a lymphoma survivor

It saved my life also.

There is another provision that has saved many lives: no more lifetime limits.

I was first diagnosed with lymphoma some 35 years ago.

I am currently on my third remission.

I would have not have reached this remission without the ACA.
Lymphoma returned in 2019, 2 years after the unsuccessful repeal of Trump and the GOP.
It took the 4th treatment before we found a treatment that worked.
Without the ACA, my treatments would have stopped.

[littlemissmartypants]

15. ❤️

[Elessar Zappa]

8. Saved my life.

I have cystic fibrosis and am on a drug that costs $320,000 a year. If Medicaid expansion hadn’t happened, I’d certainly be dead right now.

[littlemissmartypants]

16. ❤️

[IbogaProject]

9. I'll defend it while criticizing it's basis

We need single payer where every one is covered together. The ACA while it improved things is still private health insurance. A better system is to just have every one in a single 100 % coverage and have it funded with the general fund. There might have to be a small set of copay and maybe some small basic cost share just to discourage going just to talk to the Dr frivolously. The powers that be don't want all the out comes in one centralized list where we can really judge what works and what doesn't.

[lastlib]

10. As a beneficiary of the ACA,

I heartily K & R!

Thanks, Obama!
And thanks to all the Dems who supported it, and MADE it work against the strenuous efforts of those who opose(d) it.

And a giant F-U to those repuglikans and lobbyists and others who fought it.

Now, on to single-payer (Medicare for all)! Eff the private, for-profit health insurance system!

[IronLionZion]

11. Plenty of DUers were against it at the time

with some misguided thinking that if enough Americans die quickly then one day we might get single payer.

It was interesting seeing the ACA attacked from the right as some sort of socialist plot and from the left as some sort of payout to big insurance.

[betsuni]

19. I remember seeing BS for years: Big Insurance bribing Obama plot, that he personally

took public option off the table, Republicans controlled what was in the ACA, etc.

Also remember an American member of my local online group very excited during a recent visit back home to find out about her state's new affordable insurance program -- one of the main reasons she didn't plan on living in the States was health care cost, so that was a load off her mind. I broke it to her that it was the ACA, Obamacare. No reply. Thanks, Obama. Don't ask, don't tell.

Now after all these years the world didn't end, people aren't freaked out about government involvement in health care. Same as cities like Seattle passing a $15 minimum wage law in 2014 and the world didn't end and all the restaurants shut down, now after all these years nobody freaks out about higher minimum wages. Incrementalism.

All that purity BS about the evils of incrementalism and compromise and Democrats being corrupt and bribed corporatists was stupid.

[Emile]

12. It allowed my wife and I to retire at 62 with

affordable Healthcare.

[catbyte]

13. Thank you President Obama!

My late husband was diagnosed with Type I Diabetes when he was four years old. He was brittle and was in and out of hospitals for most of his life. We were one ER/hospital visit or two from our insurance's lifetime cap when President Obama signed the ACA into law. He likely saved our home and us from having to file bankruptcy with that stroke of a pen. For that, I will be ever grateful.

[JudyM]

14. Wow, that's intense.

Makes an excellent illustrative story though, right?!

[littlemissmartypants]

17. ❤️

[betsuni]

18. K&R

[BWdem4life]

20. I would rec

but then it would have 45 instead of 44