News Coverage of Healthcare Bill Signing

AMA Morning Rounds compiled this summary of news coverage.

Obama signs healthcare bill into law.

The signing of the healthcare reform legislation received very extensive, and overwhelmingly positive, media coverage, much of it casting the event as a historic occasion and as a major triumph for the President and his party. While Republicans continued to appear confident that the new law will be an electoral boon for them this fall, some analysts are now predicting that the win on healthcare gives Democrats new momentum and could change the political dynamic of recent months.

The bill itself is being described in generally positive terms. ABC World News (3/23, lead story, 2:45, Sawyer) said in its lead story last night, devoted to the bill signing at the White House, "As of today, it is the law of the land that every man, woman and child in America will have healthcare coverage." ABC (Tapper) added that Obama "was as happy as we've seen him, perhaps since the inauguration." The CBS Evening News (3/23, lead story, 3:00, Smith) led its broadcast announcing that this is "the closest the nation has ever come to universal coverage," and added that "ecstatic Congressional Democrats treated the President and Vice President like conquering heroes."

NBC Nightly News (3/23, lead story, 3:05, Williams) reported, "It was the end of the fight" Obama "staked his presidency on, and for him a crowning achievement." In his remarks, "the President took pains to highlight reforms that will happen immediately, and nightmare scenarios that won't." USA Today (3/23, Hall), the Washington Post (3/24, A1, Wilson), the New York Times (3/24, A19, Stolberg, Pear), the AP (3/24, Loven), and the Los Angeles Times (3/24, Nicholas, Parsons) also cover the story.