Five years after the Affordable Care Act, President Obama is extremely pleased with the results. In a recent speech at the White House, the President shares recent statistics that show the Affordable Care Act is saving families and businesses money, giving more people health care, and surviving countless attempts to destroy it by Republicans in Congress.
After the Act was passed, businesses added 5 million new jobs over 16 months, against doomsday predictions that it would kill the private sector and cause a spiraling recession. Healthcare costs are rising at the slowest rate in 5 years, and are detracting from the deficit instead of adding to it, cutting it by two-thirds.
Healthcare is currently the biggest factor driving the deficit down, although before ACA, it was the biggest factor driving it up. Finally, he quotes the newest statistics on healthcare, which show that 25 million people in the US now have healthcare that did not have it before the Affordable Care Act.
In the end, President Obama couldn’t stand letting the subject go without a parting quip: “We’ve been promised a lot of things over the past five years that didn’t turn out to be the case- death panels, doom, and a serious alternative from the Republicans in Congress.”