Obama: "Time To Deliver" On Health Care

President Barack Obama issued a strong plea for action on his health care agenda Saturday, using his weekly radio and Internet address to focus on his top domestic priority even while traveling overseas.

"It's time to deliver," said Mr. Obama, in a talk timed to gatherings in living rooms and coffee shops around the country by tens of thousands of Americans organized by his campaign to talk about health care. The aim of the community gatherings beginning Saturday morning and continuing through the weekend was to build a groundswell of support for congressional action.

"If we do nothing, everyone's health care will be put in jeopardy," President Obama said.

"Fixing what's wrong with our health care system is no longer a luxury we hope to achieve - it's a necessity we cannot postpone any longer," the president said.

Mr. Obama, who's been traveling in the Middle East and Europe, spoke as the first bill containing language to implement his health care goals began circulating on Capitol Hill. Draft legislation from Sen. Edward M. Kennedy's health committee would require employers to cover their employees or pay a penalty, and would guarantee coverage for all.

That parallels Mr. Obama's goals of lowering costs, ensuring choice, and providing coverage to some 50 million uninsured Americans.

President Obama articulated those goals again in his radio address and in a videotaped message that was being shown to supporters at the community meetings.

"Any health care reform must be built around fundamental reforms that lower costs, improve quality and coverage and also protect consumer choice," Mr. Obama said in the radio address.

He said that he supports a plan that would not add to the budget deficit, touching on a major issue that remains unresolved little more than a week away from the first scheduled votes in Senate committees.

Congress still hasn't figured out how to pay for a health overhaul that could cost $1.2 trillion to $1.5 trillion or even more over a decade. Mr. Obama has put forward some ideas, including cuts to Medicare and Medicaid - the government-sponsored programs that provide health care coverage to the elderly, poor and disabled. Others he's suggested, including limiting some tax deductions rich people can take, have already gotten shot down on Capitol Hill.

And despite Mr. Obama's stated preference for a bipartisan solution, that's looking hard to achieve.

Although he didn't mention the issue in his radio address, President Obama supports a new public insurance plan that would give all Americans the opportunity of getting government-sponsored care.

Private insurers are adamantly opposed, fearing they would be driven out of business, as are most Republicans. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell delivered speeches on the Senate floor almost every day this past week railing against the concept, and reiterated the point in an interview with radio reporters Friday.

"The key to a bipartisan bill is to not have a government plan in the bill, no matter what it's called," the Kentucky Republican said. "When I say no government plan, I mean no government plan. Not something described some other way, not something that gets us to the same place by indirection. No government plan."

Mr. Obama barely alluded to such opposition in his radio address.

"When you bring together disparate groups with differing views, there will be lively debate. And that's a debate I welcome," the president said. "But what we can't welcome is reform that just invests more money in the status quo - reform that throws good money after bad habits."
By Associated Press Writer Erica Werner

[inesje88]

Several years ago I was lucky enough to have an online article written about my family and I when we lost our health insurance when I became ill from a genetic syndrome. i figured if it could happen to us, it could happen to anyone. I never smoked, drank anything but a casual glass of wine and was never over weight. In fact as an avid swimmer, walker and cyclist, my BMI was below 16%.I had always had my joints dislocate often(like almost everytime I moved them), but the doctors I saw as a child taught me how to put them back into place myself and since my family had problems like that it was too be expected(although the same people died rather young in life and also had healthy habits). When my my joints began not to work at all, I found out I had a rare genetic condition. It was then that my medical bills (that were authorized by the insur.) began being not paid. When we questioned it, my husband was fired from his job-along w/ others who had used the health coverage benefits.It was a self funded plan and we paid over $500 a month for it plus high out of pockets so it was not cheap. They offered to rehire him when I would be pre-existing. Cobra would cost us over $1800 a month, he had no job(took awhile for unemployment, I was very ill and unable to even dress myself, and we had a yound child at home), so we opted out. We also had thousands in bills to pay (medical) since the insurance decided not to pay. Self funded plans don't follow many rules(aren't made to) and the plan went broke several months later.

After the story was online(it was in a major papers online edition), some people telephoned us. Some callers were nice and asked if we needed anything(money etc,, since we almost lost our house). I answered no since we sold most of the nice things my husband had inheritied to pay the bills and my young child began picking aluminum with his friends to buy groceries. BUT, some people said they were praying that my husband would find a job that DESERVED health insurance. My husband had been a Chef at a Country Club, worked 75+hrs a week for a salary. I asked I always asked these people what types of jobs DESERVED good health insurance. A retired factory worked told me manufacturing jobs did. One man said he had a job on the local army base, it was easy and had great benefits he asked me if my husband was a vet? One person told me service and food service workers don't DESERVE health care because their jobs don't require any skills. Interesting, but I guess if that job was done for the US government I guess it would. i went for a month period when I hated to answer the phone. Most callers thought their jobs deserved health insurance but pointed out the ones that didn't.

We,the USA, just went through a little scare with H1N1 flu. Most service workers in this country do not have health insurance coverage. Most of these people(day care workers, cooks, food servers, retail employ.) either don't have access to group coverage or can not afford it. If we were truly to have a pandemic, it could easyly spread in country were many of the citizens are thought to hold jobs were they aren't DESERVING of health care.

I would prefer single payer health care (lived in Belgium for a while and it can &does work),. One thing for certain the system we have no where we pay 30% of every health care dollar to health insurance corporations (for profit) that aren't necessary and who's CEO's make tens of millions by NOT providing health care.

Mean while, I am getting sicker. The house is for sale because I can't afford care in the USA. Please someone buy my house so we can move back to Belgium and I can see a doctor w/o loosing my home. Thanks and remember we all deserve affordable health care. Please take the greed out of illness.

[dancingmoon]

My brother is underemployed and therefore has no insurance. He draws nothing from the government in any way, no unemployment, no welfare, no food stamps, no anything like that.

He recently had appendicitis. He went to the ER and they removed his appendicitis and sent him home in less than 4 hours. Not even an overnight stay.

They sent him a bill for $21,000.00. His Doctor said it must be a clerical error and they entered too many zeroes, maybe $2,100.00 but surely not $21,000.00.

When he met with the hospital they told him that those with group insurance get large discounts and the hospital charges uninsured patients an increased amount to make up the losses on group insurance plans.

Does that make any sense at all? Charging 1000% markup to an underemployed uninsured patient?

He will probably never be able to pay the full $21,000.00 over the rest of his lifetime.

And that's just a 4 hour appendix removal. What about cancer patients and heart patients and others with truly expensive long term illnesses?

I know several people who recently lost their homes due to medical bills in addition to having lost their spouses to illness. And these people HAD insurance.

Someone here stated that the Constitution does not state that health care is a right or to be provided by the government. So what would that person suggest? Should people just have the good grace to hurry up and die so as not to burden society? Your Father perhaps? Your Mother? Your Wife? Your Son or Daughter? Perhaps yourself one day?

If private insurance is the better method of providing health care, why is it all such a mess?

Maybe another method should be tried since private insurance and uninsured millions has not proven to be a particularly successful method.

[aldon61]

I don't know what the healthcare package is going to look like. Whatever it is, there are going to be people (maybe many) that don't like it. But now, "times a wastin folks" our country needs a healthcare package like yesterday!! Let's do something and if we have to, tweak it later, so be it. For the past close to twenty years now, we've been arguing and debating this issue in the public with the net result that our "politicians" are literally afraid to make a decision for fear of offending a major group. This is BS people, let's get something done for once in our life.

[chitown639]

It is time for somebody to deliver on something. Obama and the Congress have delivered us nothing but huge goverment spending with nothing to show for it but a bigger government. His socialst tactics are not working and it is time for us to do something about it.
Posted by impeachbhb

I wish you would have been so restless and impatient 150 days into Bush's first term, maybe 9/11 could have been prevented. The of the matter is it's going to take much more than a 150 days to reverse 8 years of the failed policies of the Bush Administration.

[impeachbhb]

It is time for somebody to deliver on something. Obama and the Congress have delivered us nothing but huge goverment spending with nothing to show for it but a bigger government. His socialst tactics are not working and it is time for us to do something about it.

[chitown639]

Oh pshaw! We don't need government subsidized health care...what we need is affordable health care and for the federal government to butt out of the health care business...just allow the states to regulate it, and open up the markets and make them compete for business.
Posted by IThoughtItWasFunnyAgain

So you want the state governments to tell the insurance companies how much profit they are allowed to swindle out of the consumers. Isn't that the same kind of brand of SOCIALISM that you spend so much time of these board railing against? The fact of the matter is that you agree that our health care system is in need of kind of government intervention......thanks for admitting you're in favor of some kind of government control...COMRADE!!!

[erasmus111]

You live off government subsidized health care, I guess that makes you a dumbarse, right?

Posted by IThoughtItWasFunnyAgain at 8:30 PM : Jun 7, 2009

No, I don't live off subsidized health care. And the ******* is you, because you don't even know what you are talking about.

[rednomo]

For all those that parrot the far right, insurance companies and big pharm talking point that we don't need universal health care...

As Bill Maher so gracefully put it, 'With the system we have now the doctors are not making the calls, the patients cannot make the calls because the insurance companies make all the calls. It's called 'hospital gown coverage' whatever condition you currently have, chances are your @ss ain't covered.'

[rednomo]

Number of Americans without health insurance:

2000 = 42.6 million

2009 = 82 million

The Impact of Rising Health Care Costs

* A recent study by Harvard University researchers found that the average out-of-pocket medical debt for those who filed for bankruptcy was $12,000. The study found that 50 percent of all bankruptcy filings were partly the result of medical expenses. Every 30 seconds in the United States someone files for bankruptcy in the aftermath of a serious health problem.

* A new survey shows that more than 25 percent said that housing problems resulted from medical debt, including the inability to make rent or mortgage payments and the development of bad credit ratings.

* About 1.5 million families lose their homes to foreclosure every year due to unaffordable medical costs.

* A survey of Iowa consumers found that in order to cope with rising health insurance costs, 86 percent said they had cut back on how much they could save, and 44 percent said that they have cut back on food and heating expenses.

* Retiring elderly couples will need $250,000 in savings just to pay for the most basic medical coverage. Many experts believe that this figure is conservative and that $300,000 may be a more realistic number.

* According to a recent report, the United States has $480 billion in excess spending each year in comparison to Western European nations that have universal health insurance coverage. The costs are mainly associated with excess administrative costs and poorer quality of care.

* The United States spends six times more per capita on the administration of the health care system than its peer Western European nations.

Source: The National Coalition on Health Care

www.nchc.org/facts/cost.shtml

[rednomo]

Here's the rundown of all the money that the people who are blocking real reform in health care have received from the health care industry.

Arlen Specter (R-D- PA- $4,026,933)
Max Baucus (DLC- MT- $2,833,731)
Mitch (rhymes with Big Pharms b****) McConnell (R-KY- $2,758,468)

And when you just go right to Big Insurance, the non-presidential candidates who got the biggest legalized bribes were the 7 senators who have been tasked with the job of killing single-payer:

Ben Nelson (DLC-NE- $1,196,799)
Max Baucus (DLC- MT- $1,184,113)
Joe Lieberman (DLC- CT- $1,036,302)
Arlen Specter (R-D- PA- $1,035,530)
Chuck Schumer (D-NY- $981,400)
Mitch McConnell (R-KY- $929,207)
Chuck Grassley (R-IA- $884,724)

Watch them fight like he!l to keep Big Pharm and the Big Insurance companies in charge and making the calls on your health care programs.