Beaming Obama signs historic $938bn overhaul

A BEAMING President Barack Obama yesterday signed an historic $938 billion healthcare overhaul that guarantees coverage for 32 million uninsured Americans and will touch nearly every citizen’s life. It is the biggest shift in US domestic policy since the 1960s and caps a divisive, year-long debate that could define the November elections.

Celebrating “a new season in America” – the signature accomplishment of his White House so far and one denied to a line of presidents before him – Obama made the massive bill law with an East Room signing ceremony. He was joined by jubilant House and Senate Democrats as well as lesser-known people whose health care struggles have touched the president. Obama scheduled back-to-back events to mark the moment, with much of his White House audience, as well as hundreds of others, gathering at the Interior Department for Act II immediately after the signing.

“With all the punditry, all the lobbying, all the game-playing that passes for governing here in Washington, it’s been easy at times to doubt our ability to do such a big thing, such a complicated thing, to wonder if there are limits to what we as a people can still achieve,” Obama said, his remarks interrupted by applause after nearly every sentence. “We are not a nation that scales back its aspirations. We are not a nation that falls prey to doubt or mistrust. We don’t fall prey to fear. We are not a nation that does what’s easy. That’s not who we are. That’s not how we got here.”

The president’s victory lap proceeded even as Congress struggled to complete the overhaul with a companion measure making changes to the main bill that were a condition of House Democrats’ approval. Debate on that bill, also passed on Sunday by the House, were set to begin yesterday in the Senate.

Not everyone was cheering the new law.

Attorneys general from 13 states filed suit to stop the overhaul just minutes after the bill signing, contending the law is unconstitutional. Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum took the lead in the lawsuit.

Other attorneys general may join the lawsuit or sue separately.

Republicans remained firm in their opposition, declaring it much too costly and unlikely to produce the results that Obama claims. Obama emphasised the most immediate impacts, including the ability of young adults to remain on their parents’ health plans and a ban on insurers denying coverage to sick children.