Obama Signs Health Care Bill Into Law

At the New York Times, "Obama Signs Health Care Overhaul Bill, With a Flourish" (via Memeorandum):

With the strokes of 20 pens, President Obama signed his health care overhaul — the most sweeping social legislation enacted in decades — into law on Tuesday during a festive, at times raucous, White House ceremony.

“We have just now enshrined, as soon as I sign this bill, the core principle that everybody should have some basic security when it comes to their health care,” Mr. Obama declared in the East Room, before an audience of more than 200 Democratic lawmakers, White House aides and others who rode a yearlong legislative roller-coaster ride that ended with Sunday night’s House passage of the bill. They interrupted him repeatedly with shouts and standing ovations.

Moments later, the president sat down at a table, and affixed his left-handed, curlicue signature, almost letter by letter, to the measure, the Affordable Health Care for America Act, using 20 pens that he intended to pass out to key lawmakers and others as mementoes.

He was surrounded by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid, Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and other top Democratic leaders, as well as some special guests: 11-year-old Marcelas Owens of Seattle, who became an advocate for health care reform after his mother died without health insurance, and Connie Anderson, the sister of Natoma Canfield, the Ohio cancer survivor whose struggle to pay skyrocketing premiums became a touchstone of Mr. Obama’s campaign to overhaul the system.

Vicki Kennedy, the widow of the late Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, who had been a driving force for health care legislation before his death last year, was also by Mr. Obama’s side. Mrs. Kennnedy wore a blue plastic bracelet around her wrist that said “TedStrong,” and appeared emotional after the ceremony.

“I know how happy he would be,” she said of her husband, adding, “It was so meaningful for him, in a very personal way.”