Obama and Biden reunite to tout health care law

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Attendees included Democratic members of Congress who had worked to pass the law more than a decade ago — and helped roll back repeated Republican efforts to repeal the law since 2010.

Obama recalled that President Nancy Pelosi of California and the late Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., competed for votes to help turn bills into law, and acknowledged that Democrats who lost their seats l ‘had made up, in part, for the law’s early unpopularity. And, he admitted, some of those wounds leading up to the 2010 midterm elections were self-inflicted, including the failed initial launch of HealthCare.gov.

“I intended to push through health care even if it cost me re-election. Which, for a while, seemed possible,” Obama said, adding that passing the sweeping overhaul meant that “Members of Congress took brave votes, including some who knew their vote would likely cost them their seat.”

“Republicans tried to repeal what we did, over and over again,” Obama noted, citing, among others, former Solicitor General Donald B. Verrilli, who successfully defended the law in the Supreme Court.

Obama was keen to let his former vice president shine in the first two years of his presidency, but Biden gave his former partner all the credit on Tuesday.

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