Making history with several pen strokes, US President Barack Obama Tuesday signed into law sweeping reforms that will for the first time ensure health care coverage for almost every American.
"Today, after almost a century of trying, today after over a year of debate, today, after all the votes have been tallied, health insurance reform becomes law in the United States of America," Obama said.
"The bill I\'m signing will set in motion reforms that generations of Americans have fought for and marched for and hungered to see," he told a jubilant, packed audience at the White House signing ceremony.
Delighted lawmakers and guests cheered and whistled as the dream of generations finally became reality, and Obama made good on his campaign promise to overhaul America\'s costly, but creaking health care system.
House of Representative lawmakers late Sunday narrowly approved by 219-212 the Senate-passed legislation, using their majority to muscle the measure through in face of a united Republican opposition.
With a package of fixes still to be voted on, the 940-billion-dollar overhaul will extend coverage to some 32 million Americans who currently lack it, ensuring 95 percent of under-65 US citizens will have health insurance.
The historic signing came a century after president Theodore Roosevelt first called for a national approach to US health care.
For the first time Americans will be required to buy insurance or face fines. Among other key reforms, the new law bans insurance companies from denying coverage to people with pre-existing conditions, from dropping clients who get sick or from setting lifetime caps.
"You\'ve made history," Vice President Joe Biden told a beaming Obama. "Mr. President, you\'ve done what generations of not just ordinary, but great men and women have attempted to do.
"You have turned, Mr. President, the right of every American to have access to decent health care into reality for the first time in American history."
In the ceremonial East Room, where president Lyndon Johnson signed the civil rights bill into law in 1964, there was a party atmosphere as euphoric Democrats gathered to witness the act, sharing hugs and slapping palms.
Among them were Vicki and Caroline Kennedy, the widow and niece of the late Ted Kennedy who struggled for almost five decades to enact health care reform.
Obama used an estimated 20 pens to sign the 2000-plus page bill, intending to pass most of them out to guests as souvenirs of the momentous occasion.
The Senate is expected this week to take up the changes needed to their initial legislation and approve them separately under rules that prevent Republicans from using a parliamentary tactic, the filibuster, to indefinitely delay and kill the measure.
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But Obama still has a hard sell defending the reforms ahead of the key congressional mid-term November elections with Republicans deeply angered by the legislation, which they say is too costly.
"Democrat leaders may have gotten their votes. They may have gotten their win. But today is a new day," said Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. "I have a message for our Democrat friends: \'Enough is enough\'."
Obama\'s former rival for the presidency, Republican Senator John McCain, even said Monday that "there will be no (bipartisan) cooperation for the rest of the year."
On Thursday, the US president will launch the first of a series of campaign-style events on the bill\'s behalf in Iowa, the state that propelled him on the road to the White House.
Overturning the plan is a mathematical impossibility in this election cycle as Republicans cannot win the two-thirds majority in the House and Senate needed to override Obama\'s veto.
Republicans take health battle to the states, courts
More than a dozen Tuesday filed lawsuits against the legislation just moments after Obama signed the bill, and Idaho and Virginia have already passed laws preventing their residents from being forced to buy insurance.
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