(Newser)
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President Obama and Mitt Romney wasted little time responding to the Supreme Court's ruling upholding the Affordable Care Act today. Romney went first, speaking at a podium emblazoned with the words, "Repeal and Replace ObamaCare," and that's indeed the message he pressed. The court, he said, may have ruled the law constitutional, but "what they did not do is say that ObamaCare was a good law," Romney said. "ObamaCare was a bad law yesterday, it is a bad law today." "If we want to replace ObamaCare, we have to replace Obama," Romney said, according to Politico. He vowed to replace it with reforms that would still ensure coverage for people with preexisting conditions, while bringing down costs.
Obama naturally responded by praising the Court's decision, reports Politico, calling it a "victory for people all over this country." "They've reaffirmed a fundamental principle: That here in America, in the wealthiest nation on Earth, no illness or accident should lead to any family's financial ruin," he said, before launching into a laundry list of the law's popular provisions and a defense of the individual mandate. He said the mandate was necessary to ensure that people didn't wait to get insurance until they got sick. "It should be pretty clear by now that I didn't do this because it was good politics," he said. "I did it because I believed it was good for the country."
