President Obama travels to Boston today -- defending his health care law from the same site where the state's Republican governor in 2006 signed a similar measure into law.
Obama will deliver his remarks at Boston's Faneuil Hall, where then-Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney was joined by Sen. Ted Kennedy and others as he signed the state’s health care reform law, which the administration has said served as the model for Obama's Affordable Care Act.
With the plan's rollout swamped by reports of a glitchy website, the White House says Obama will "address the latest updates on the aggressive work" being done to improve HealthCare.gov.
He'll also look to draw comparisons between the national plan's rollout and Massachusetts’s experience during its first year of health care enrollment. The administration has noted that in Massachusetts just 123 consumers – or 0.3 percent of the eventual enrollment – signed up in the first month they could enroll -- but more than 20 percent enrolled in the last month. By the end of a year, 36,000 had signed up.
The White House says the number of uninsured young people in the state dropped from about 1 in 4 to 1 in 10 within 3 years. "Today, 97 percent of Massachusetts residents have health insurance coverage and the primary attacks against this law – many of which we are hearing again today about the ACA – never proved true," the White House says.
Obama will also attend a fundraiser for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which funds House races for Democrats, before leaving Boston. He's scheduled to depart at least an hour before Game 6 of the World Series between the Boston Red Sox and the St. Louis Cardinals.