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Obama, Romney and Rubio React To Healthcare Ruling

Dawn Megli |
June 28, 2012 | 9:12 a.m. PDT

Executive Producer

The ruling is considered a major victory for Obama as it upholds the majority of his trademark healthcare legislation. (Courtesy Creative Commons/ ViaMoi
The ruling is considered a major victory for Obama as it upholds the majority of his trademark healthcare legislation. (Courtesy Creative Commons/ ViaMoi
President Obama and GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney weighed in today to offer their competing spins on the landmark Supreme Court ruling which upheld the consitutionality of the Affordable Care Act.

"In the wealthiest nation on earth, no illness or accident should lead to any family's financial ruin," Obama said in a press conference Thursday.

"I didn't do it because it was good politics," Obama said. "I did it because I believed it was good for the country."

Obama said it was now time to move forward and focus on putting people back to work, now that there are fewer "Americans, other sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, fathers and mothers, who will not have to hang their fortunes on chance."

Obama lauded the Supreme Court's decision, in part because it requires those who can afford insurance to purchase it. Obama was quick to mention how the provision has, at some point, enjoyed support from Mitt Romney.

Romney offered a very different reaction to SCOTUS decision. Speaking with the Capitol building as his backdrop, Romney said he agreed with the dissent.

"What the court did not do on its last day in session, I will do on my first day if elected president," Romney said. "And that is I will act to repeal Obamacare.”

Romney said the ruling merely reflected on the constitutionality, rather than the merit, of the law.

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) said the healthcare law is a "culmination of broken promises" by Obama not to raise taxes on the middle class.

"This has now turned the IRS into an enforcement mechanism for Obamacare," Rubio said on CNN.

 

Read reaction to the decision at the Los Angeles Times.

Follow Neon Tommy's coverage of healthcare reform.

Reach Executive Producer Dawn Megli here; follow her on Twitter here.



 

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