Obama pitches health reform in WI
Posted: Thursday, June 11, 2009 3:48 PM by Mark Murray
Filed Under:
White House, Economy, Barack Obama
From NBC's Athena Jones
GREEN BAY, Wis. -- President Obama today put on his campaigner-in-chief hat, leaving the capital for a day to pitch his plan to overhaul the health-care system to the public.
Hitting the road is a practice the White House has used repeatedly to promote the Obama agenda -- from the stimulus package to the budget. And while he did not get into the specifics of what the plan should look like, he laid out some general principles and answered questions from about 1,750 area residents, elected officials, and community leaders packed into a high school gymnasium on the last day of school.
Video: President Obama tells a Green Bay, Wis. town hall that unless medical costs are brought under control, everyone's health care will be jeopardized.
The White House wants any overhaul to result in a public/government option for insurance -- to compete with private plans under which most Americans are covered. Some Republicans have called the government option a non-starter, and one major physicians group, the American Medical Association, is also opposed to it.
Obama is set to address the annual meeting of the AMA in Chicago on Monday, and today he reiterated his strong belief that a public/government option would force private insurers to hold prices down through competition.
In a February speech spelling out his top priorities before Congress, the president said Americans could not afford to wait another year to change the broken system. He and White House officials (like OMB Director Peter Orszag) have consistently argued that lowering health-care costs is vital to the nation's fiscal stability.
A common campaign theme -- the idea that 'we're all in this together" and that sense that "I am my brother's keeper" -- reemerged here today, as Obama sought to drive home what was at stake for the American people.
"If we don't act, and act soon, to bring down costs, it will jeopardize everyone's health care," he said. "If we do not act, every American will feel the consequences."
He went on to detail those consequences: higher premiums, lower take-home pay, "lost jobs and shuttered businesses", more uninsured, and debt for generations.
Obama also tied sky-rocketing health-care costs to the economy, saying they had helped to leave firms like General Motors and Chrysler -- both of which were forced into bankruptcy this year -- at a competitive disadvantage with their foreign counterparts.
He added that the growing cost of entitlement programs were a major concern. "For the government, the growing cost of Medicare and Medicaid is the biggest threat to our federal deficit," he said. "Bigger than Social Security, bigger than all the investments we've made so far. So if you're worried about spending and you're worried about deficits, you need to be worried about the cost of health care."
Paying for change
Still, agreeing on how to pay for a massive restructuring of a system that represents some 17% of the economy is among the many challenges the administration faces in getting a satisfactory plan passed this year.
While the federal budget sets aside a reserve fund of $635 billion as a "downpayment" on overhauling the health care system, Orszag said Wednesday that the administration would be proposing $200 billion to $300 billion in additional cost savings for Medicare and Medicaid -- aimed at keeping this reform deficit neutral. Obama told the Green Bay crowd that even with these savings, more revenue would be required to fund the necessary changes. And he proposed that some additional money could come from limiting tax deductions on the highest-income Americans.
After meeting with the president at the White House yesterday, Sens. Max Baucus (D), Chuck Grassley (R), Chris Dodd (D), and Mike Enzi (R) stressed their quest for a bipartisan piece of legislation, and said that they and Obama were "flexible" about the details of the plan.
Town hall scene
Obama spoke for less 20 minutes, and he took questions for about 45 minutes on topics ranging from the single-payer option and his timeline for overhauling the system, to investing in prevention and improving the education system.
He repeated his desire to have a bill on his desk by October, and asked people to follow the debate on Capitol Hill closely over the next eight weeks and to put pressure on their members of Congress to get it done. As he often did on the campaign trail, Obama insisted he was not ideologically driven and was open to other ideas, while also suggesting his Republican friends' opposition to a public plan was not based on evidence but a fear that a public plan would represent the first step on the path to a government takeover of the entire system.
The president made a point of highlighting Green Bay's success at keeping health-care costs low while keeping quality high, but he said that even if the bill was passed to restructure the health-care system, it would take four or five years to make many of the most important improvements -- the kinds that would allow cities across the country to duplicate cost savings.
According to reports from the press pool traveling with him, Obama's motorcade was greeted by several hundred protesters assembled outside the high school as he arrived -- many of whom booed and held up bright red signs with white lettering that read "No socialism" and "No health care"; called Obama a communist; and asked, "Taxed enough yet?"
He met with grassroots activists from Organizing for America before the event. Town hall attendees could obtain tickets for the event on-line, by telephone, and through community leaders.
