President Obama praised Medicare during his Saturday weekly address, calling the $511 billion dollar expense "heroic" for saving millions of lives. He also said that it was "these American endeavors" (read: government programs) that make America a great country and wasted no time lumping his own signature legislation into that equation.

"This week," the president began, "there was a big birthday you might have missed. Medicare and Medicaid turned 50 years old. And that’s something worth celebrating."

Obama said programs like these are "the best measures of a country" and ones that should grant Americans tremendous pride for improving not only health but poverty. "[A]s Americans, we declared that our citizens deserve a basic measure of security and dignity," said the president. And it's those promises that carry on in the Affordable Care Act, he declared.

"These promises we made as a nation have saved millions of our own people from poverty and hardship, allowing us new freedom, new independence, and the chance to live longer, better lives. That’s something to be proud of. It’s heroic. These endeavors -- these American endeavors -- they didn’t just make us a better country. They reaffirmed that we are a great country."

Furthermore, the president doesn't believe that these expensive and burdensome programs are in crisis at all. In fact, he says that anyone saying that is just making a "political excuse" in order to defund the programs. And with the passage of Obamacare, the president assures this so-called truly American endeavor is only going to make everything better.

"Today, these programs are so fundamental to our way of life that it’s easy to forget how hard people fought against them at the time," Obama said. "But ultimately, we came to see these programs for what they truly are -- a promise that if we work hard, and play by the rules, we’ll be rewarded with a basic measure of dignity, security, and the freedom to live our lives as we want."