Yes, today is the anniversary of a very Big Fcking Deal, as Vice President Biden said six years ago just before President Obama signed it into law.
For our family, it's meant the difference between health and our home, or bankruptcy and misery. I'm sure that's true of others as well.
In spite of 62 repeal attempts, 2 Supreme Court challenges, and ongoing struggles over Medicaid, it survived, and it's helping millions.
As Vox notes, the passage of the ACA and Dodd-Frank, alongside the stimulus bill that really did save the country from a great depression as well as changing our energy policy, cements President Obama's tenure as transformative and consequential.
[The ACA's] anniversary, then, serves as a crucial reminder that, love him or hate him, Barack Obama is one of the most consequential presidents in American history — and that he will be a particularly towering figure in the history of American progressivism.
He signed into law a comprehensive national health insurance bill, a goal that had eluded progressive presidents for a century. He got surprisingly tough reforms to Wall Street passed as well, not to mention a stimulus package that both blunted the recession and transformed education and energy policy.
He's put in place the toughest climate rules in American history and signed a major international climate accord. He opened the US to Cuba for the first time in more than half a century, and reached a peaceful settlement to the nuclear standoff with Iran.
Yes, we could. Yes, we did. And yes, there is still more to do.
