Obama: ObamaCare Helps Advance America’s ‘Rugged Individualism’

“What about those parents with kids who have a chronic illness like asthma and have to keep going back to the emergency room because they don’t have a regular doctor, and the bills never stop coming? Who’s going to stand up for them? Behind every single story was a simple question: What kind of country do we want to be? Are we a country that’s defined by values that say access to health care is a commodity awarded to only the highest bidders, or by the values that say health care is a fundamental right? Do we believe that where you start should determine how far you go, or do we believe that in the greatest nation on Earth, everybody deserves the opportunity to make it -- to make of their lives what they will? The rugged individualism that defines America has always been bound by a shared set of values, an enduring sense that we’re in this together, that America is not a place where we simply turn away from the sick, or turn our backs on the tired, the poor, the huddled masses. It is a place sustained by the idea: I am my brother’s keeper. I am my sister’s keeper -- that we have an obligation to put ourselves in our neighbor’s shoes and see each other’s common humanity. And so, after a century of talk, after decades of trying, after a year of sustained debate, we finally made health care reform a reality here in America.”