Obama signs historic health care overhaul into law

WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama on Tuesday signed into law a vast overhaul of the nation's health care system, the most sweeping expansion of government social policy in more than 40 years, and perhaps the most polarizing.

A triumphant Obama heralded what he called "a new season in America," saying that the new law finally delivered changes in health care that generations of Americans had sought and fought for.

"Our presence here today is remarkable and improbable," Obama said. "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."

Now, however, he said, "we are affirming that essential truth - a truth every generation is called to rediscover for itself - that we are not a nation that scales back its aspirations."

The president signed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, cheered on by Democratic lawmakers as well as Vicki Kennedy, the widow of the late Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., who'd made the expansion of health care his life's work.

Supporters interrupted several times with applause and campaignlike chants, turning the ceremony into a celebration. Even before Obama walked in, a group of Democratic women from Congress lined up on the stage to pose for pictures. Others broke into chants of the Obama campaign refrain, "Fired up, ready to go."

Swept up by the moment, Vice President Joe Biden was overheard telling the president, "This is a big f---ing deal."

There were no Republicans at the historic signing. Every Republican in Congress voted against the bill, and Republicans protested anew Tuesday that the measure threatened Americans' freedom.

"We've heard a lot today about how historic this bill is, and it's true. It is an historic betrayal of the clear will of the American people. It is an historic loss of liberty," Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele said. "It's not too late to repeal this bill, but to do that we need a change in management at the U.S. Capitol."

Outside Washington, 14 state attorneys general - all but one of them Republicans - filed two lawsuits in federal court challenging the constitutionality of the new law, arguing that its mandate that people buy health insurance exceeds federal power.

"It forces people to do something - in the sense of buying a health care policy or paying a penalty, a tax or a fine - that simply the Constitution does not allow Congress to do," said Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum, who's seeking the Republican nomination for governor.

He was one of 13 attorneys general who filed one suit, along with those from Alabama, Colorado, Idaho, Louisiana, Michigan, Nebraska, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah and Washington state.

Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, who's also a Republican, filed a separate suit.

The bill, passed Dec. 24 by the Senate and Sunday by the House of Representatives, is designed to provide health insurance by 2019 to 32 million Americans who lack it now, institute new federal regulation of health insurance companies - including a mandate that they insure everyone regardless of prior medical problems - and curb costs.

Despite the fanfare at the White House, the law was just one step of a grand political bargain that was needed to get it through the House and to the president's waiting pen.

Soon after the signing, the Senate took up the second step, a "reconciliation" plan to amend the law in order to change the way it would finance the benefits and strip out some of the deals used to win Senate votes on Christmas Eve, such as the "Cornhusker kickback" of Medicaid benefits just for Nebraska.

The combined plan would cost an estimated $938 billion over 10 years. Financed by tax increases and cuts in Medicare, it would reduce the federal budget deficit by $143 billion over the decade, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

It's the broadest move by the federal government to guarantee health care since the creation of Medicare for the elderly in 1965. It exceeds the expansion of Medicare to cover prescription drugs, passed by the Republicans and signed into law by President George W. Bush in 2003.

The Senate expects a final vote Thursday on the reconciliation plan. The House already has approved it.

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