First thread here.
12:55 PM PT: President Obama comments on the conversation he had yesterday with House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, who issued a statement blasting the president for having criticized Republicans for blocking immigration reform after the call. The president says the conversation was "friendly" but doesn't back down from the urgency to resolve immigration reform. He says the failure to move forward is hurting families and the economy.
12:58 PM PT: Back to Obamacare: "I've always said that on any large legislation like this there will be things that need to be improved [...] but the challenge we have is that we have certain members of the Republican Party" believe that anything that makes Obamacare work better "is a concession to me."
1:01 PM PT: "We have 8 million people signed up through the exchanges. That doesn't include the 3 million young people [insured through their parents.] That doesn't include 3 million people covered through Medicaid expansion. If my math is correct that's 14 million people." And yes, if you're reading that as a dare from Obama to the GOP to keep on their doomed quest for repeal, you're 100 percent right.
1:02 PM PT: "If this is working for a lot of people but there are still improvements to make, why are we still having a conservation about repealing it?" Obama's hope, he says, "is that we start moving beyond that." He concedes that won't happen before November because the GOP is committed to repeal, but he nonetheless says he believes most Americans want to move on.
1:02 PM PT: "If Republicans want to spend the entire next six months or year talking about repealing a health care bill providing insurance to millions of people without providing any sort of alternative, that's their prerogative." Obama also adds one more than that gets him mad: "States that for no reason other than political spite" are denying Medicaid expansion. "That's wrong. It should stop. Those [5 million] folks should be able to get insurance like anyone else."
1:03 PM PT: More on GOP: "Their party is going through the stages of grief ... anger, denial ... we haven't reached acceptance yet."
1:08 PM PT: On whether Democrats should campaign on Obamacare: "Democrats should forcefully depend and be proud of the fact" that people are being helped by Obamacare. But his point is also that it's long past time for Republicans to "move on" from their repeal obsession. "I'm still puzzled why they have made this their sole agenda item." He says he thinks Democrats should talk about other issues that are important to voters including "how we're going to put more money in the pockets of ordinary people."
1:15 PM PT: President Obama wraps up the press conference with a reminder that in many ways, none of this is new: Social Security and Medicare were derided by the right as un-American socialism, but now both programs are part of the American fabric of life—and just as with those programs, the Obamacare's critics will be proven wrong.