The Affordable Care Act was a landmark law almost a century in the making. Presidents from Teddy Roosevelt to Bill Clinton tried to reform a health care system that had been badly broken for generations. For too long, tens of millions of Americans didn't have health insurance—and even those who did often couldn't afford the care they needed.

In 2010, a Democratic Congress passed comprehensive health reform into law, and two years ago today, President Obama's signature made it the law of the land. Already, millions of Americans are benefiting in very real ways. Medicare is stronger for seniors, and women can get life-saving mammograms at no extra cost. Kids won't be denied coverage because they were born with pre-existing conditions. From children to senior citizens, Americans are saving money on their health care. In just two years:

• 180 million Americans are protected against the insurance industry's worst abuses—like having their coverage dropped when they need it most and unjustified excessive premium increases.
• 17 million American children with pre-existing conditions can no longer be turned down if they need coverage.
• Insurance companies can no longer impose a lifetime cap on your health coverage.
• 86 million Americans have benefited from expanded access to free preventive care like mammograms and colonoscopies.
• 2.5 million young Americans now have health insurance—because they can now stay on their parents' plans until age 26.
• Prescription drug discounts saved 3.6 million seniors and people with disabilities in the Medicare donut hole an average of $604.

And that's just the beginning. New provisions of the law continue to be implemented, and over the coming months and years, costs will continue to go down, and the quality of care will continue to rise. When the law is fully implemented two years from now, every single American will have access to affordable health care—including more than 30 million Americans who had been without coverage.

This is an anniversary worth celebrating.

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Moments ago, the United States 6th Circuit Court of Appeals announced that it has upheld the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act. This law extends health coverage to millions of people, lowers costs, and ends health care discrimination based on pre-existing illnesses.

The Honorable Judge Boyce Martin, author of the decision, stated:

This is an appeal from the district court’s determination that the minimum coverage provision of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is constitutionally sound. Among the Act’s many changes to the national markets in health care delivery and health insurance, the minimum coverage provision requires all applicable individuals to maintain minimum essential health insurance coverage or to pay a penalty.

Another key point from the decision:

By regulating the practice of self-insuring for the cost of health care delivery, the minimum coverage provision is facially constitutional under the Commerce Clause for two independent reasons. First, the provision regulates economic activity that Congress had a rational basis to believe has substantial effects on interstate commerce. In addition, Congress had a rational basis to believe that the provision was essential to its larger economic scheme reforming the interstate markets in health care and health insurance.

Today’s decision is the first at the appellate level. Click here to read the full ruling.

A little more than a year ago, President Obama signed the Affordable Care Act. Now many young adults under 26 are now eligible to join their parents’ health care plans, a change that makes it easier and more affordable for young people to receive coverage as they begin their careers.

According to Kaiser Health News, a news organization that covers health care policy and politics, private insurers are seeing a bump in enrollees under 26:

WellPoint, the nation's largest publicly traded health insurer with 34 million customers, said the dependent provision was responsible for adding 280,000 new members. That was about one third its total enrollment growth in the first three months of 2011. 

Others large insurers said they have added tens of thousands of young adults. Aetna, for example, added fewer than 100,000; Kaiser Permanente, about 90,000; Highmark Inc., about 72,000; Health Care Service Corp., about 82,000; and United Healthcare, about 13,000. 

The Health and Human Services Department has estimated that about 1.2 million young adults would sign up for coverage in 2011. The early numbers from insurers show it could be much higher, said Aaron Smith, executive director of the Young Invincibles, a Washington-based nonprofit group that advocates for young adults.

This change is already making a big difference in the lives of young adults:

That helped Alexander Lataille, 23, of Laurel, Md., who graduated from college last spring and was worried about being kicked off his parents’ plan. But Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Rhode Island adopted the under-26 provision early – and that kept him insured, even as he took jobs that didn't offer insurance. "It was a big relief," said Lataille, who has asthma.

Kaiser Health News points out that people in their 20s have the highest rate of uninsured among any age group, roughly 30 percent. This fact was made worse by many insurance companies’ unwillingness to provide coverage to that age group:

Before the federal law was passed, many insurers dropped coverage of children either at age 18 or 21 or when the children graduated from college. More than half the states required coverage to continue until at least age 25, but those laws often had several restrictions.

Under the Affordable Care Act, that trend has been reversed.

Last Friday, Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives voted to pass their blueprint for 2012 government spending. In some ways, their proposal is a programmatic obituary: They would cut everything from education for low-income preschoolers to taxes for millionaires.

They also want to end Medicare as we know it--abolishing the guaranteed health care benefits seniors depend on.

Republicans hope to turn it into a voucher program--burdening seniors with additional costs and putting more money into pockets of insurance companies. According to the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities:

In 2022 (when the voucher system would go into effect), total spending attributable to a 65-year-old Medicare beneficiary would rise from $14,700 to $20,500, or almost 40 percent. And this beneficiary's out-of-pocket costs would more than double, from about $6,000 a year to over $12,000. These differences would grow even larger in later years, because the value of the voucher would not keep pace with the growth of health care costs.

Additionally, the Republican plan would no longer guarantee the same quality of health benefits and choice of doctors that seniors currently have under Medicare. It also rescinds the fix made under the Affordable Care Act to Medicare prescription drug gap, known as the "donut hole," turning back the clock on the progress made to help seniors cover rising drug costs.

As President Obama said in yesterday's town hall meeting in Annandale, Virginia, reforming Medicare must be part of a broader effort to reduce costs across the board:

[W]e are going to have to reform Medicare and our entire health care system in order to improve quality for the amount of money that we spend--because we spend much more money in this country on health care than any other industrialized country, and our outcomes aren't better.

And that's what we started doing with health care reform last year.

Read the President's full remarks from yesterday's event here.

Last Friday, Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives voted to pass their blueprint for 2012 government spending. In some ways, their proposal is a programmatic obituary: They would cut everything from education for low-income preschoolers to taxes for millionaires.

They also want to end Medicare as we know it--abolishing the guaranteed health care benefits seniors depend on.

Republicans hope to turn it into a voucher program--burdening seniors with additional costs and putting more money into pockets of insurance companies. According to the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities:

In 2022 (when the voucher system would go into effect), total spending attributable to a 65-year-old Medicare beneficiary would rise from $14,700 to $20,500, or almost 40 percent. And this beneficiary's out-of-pocket costs would more than double, from about $6,000 a year to over $12,000. These differences would grow even larger in later years, because the value of the voucher would not keep pace with the growth of health care costs.

Additionally, the Republican plan would no longer guarantee the same quality of health benefits and choice of doctors that seniors currently have under Medicare. It also rescinds the fix made under the Affordable Care Act to Medicare prescription drug gap, known as the "donut hole," turning back the clock on the progress made to help seniors cover rising drug costs.

As President Obama said in yesterday's town hall meeting in Annandale, Virginia, reforming Medicare must be part of a broader effort to reduce costs across the board:

[W]e are going to have to reform Medicare and our entire health care system in order to improve quality for the amount of money that we spend--because we spend much more money in this country on health care than any other industrialized country, and our outcomes aren't better.

And that's what we started doing with health care reform last year.

Read the President's full remarks from yesterday's event here.