It started out with such high hopes:
“I will sign a universal health care bill into law by the end of my first term as president that will cover every American and cut the cost of a typical family’s premium by up to $2,500 a year.”
That was on the trail in 2008, an audacious promise Politifact ruled flatly “Broken.” Obama repeated the promises of lower premiums and bent cost curves as a central part of his pitch in passing the health care law. It is called “The Affordable Care Act.” But most supporters of Obamacare have stopped talking about cost savings and started focusing on increased benefits, acknowledging (sometimes explicitly and sometimes implicitly) that expanded coverage and more benefits will actually cost more money, not less, but that the trade-off is worth it.
President Obama joined that crowd in his second Inaugural address Monday. It came as Obama just barely grazed two issues rather important to the American people at the end of this paragraph:
We understand that outworn programs are inadequate to the needs of our time. So we must harness new ideas and technology to remake our government, revamp our tax code, reform our schools, and empower our citizens with the skills they need to work hard or learn more, reach higher. But while the means will change, our purpose endures. A nation that rewards the effort and determination of every single American, that is what this moment requires. That is what will give real meaning to our creed. We, the people, still believe that every citizen deserves a basic measure of security and dignity. We must make the hard choices to reduce the cost of health care and the size of our deficit.
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