Obama Video Marks Health Care Law Anniversary
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Mark Wilson/Getty Images(WASHINGTON) — President Obama marks the two-year anniversary of the Affordable Care Act with a new campaign video that recounts how “an unmet promise” of health insurance reform became “the law of the land.”
The film, like a recent campaign documentary on Obama’s first term, casts the president as a historic champion of everyday Americans who have battled with insurance companies or struggled to receive care.
“Health care is a fundamental challenge that this country has faced for a long time,” Obama says, juxtaposed between archival footage of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Bill Clinton, who each attempted to make health care a domestic policy priority.
[ WATCH THE CAMPAIGN VIDEO HERE ]
“We have tens of millions of people without health insurance; We’ve got people who were getting a raw deal from their insurance companies; People with preexisting conditions who couldn’t get coverage, or their kids have preexisting conditions and couldn’t get covered. It is heartbreaking,” he says in between clips of news stories and personal testimonials on the issues.
“I was not going to allow another decade to pass by where we kick the can down the road because it was the politically convenient thing to do,” he says.
The film – titled The Story of the Affordable Care Act: An Unmet Promise to Law of the Land — then pivots to what Democrats say is at risk in the 2012 campaign.
“Right now you have choices about who’s going to fight for you: ‘Are we going to roll back health care that promises you having more security, maybe gives you a chance to get health insurance for the very first time?’ You need somebody who’s fighting for you right now, and that’s what I wake up thinking about every single day, fighting for you.”
The White House has said Obama does not have plans Friday to publicly mark the law’s anniversary.
Americans remain skeptical of the legislation, according to the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll. Fifty-two percent oppose the law overall, while just 41 percent support it. Two thirds of Americans think the Supreme Court should either overturn the law or at least the insurance mandate.
Copyright 2012 ABC News Radio