Obama Joint Session Speech On Health Care Advance Excerpts
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EXCERPTS OF THE PRESIDENT’S ADDRESS TO A JOINT SESSION OF CONGRESS TONIGHT:
I am not the first President to take up this cause, but I am determined to be the last. It has now been nearly a century since Theodore Roosevelt first called for health care reform. And ever since, nearly every President and Congress, whether Democrat or Republican, has attempted to meet this challenge in some way. A bill for comprehensive health reform was first introduced by John Dingell Sr. in 1943. Sixty-five years later, his son continues to introduce that same bill at the beginning of each session.
Our collective failure to meet this challenge – year after year, decade after decade – has led us to a breaking point. Everyone understands the extraordinary hardships that are placed on the uninsured, who live every day just one accident or illness away from bankruptcy. These are not primarily people on welfare. These are middle-class Americans. Some can’t get insurance on the job. Others are self-employed, and can’t afford it, since buying insurance on your own costs you three times as much as the coverage you get from your employer. Many other Americans who are willing and able to pay are still denied insurance due to previous illnesses or conditions that insurance companies decide are too risky or expensive to cover.
***
During that time, we have seen Washington at its best and its worst.
We have seen many in this chamber work tirelessly for the better part of this year to offer thoughtful ideas about how to achieve reform. Of the five committees asked to develop bills, four have completed their work, and the Senate Finance Committee announced today that it will move forward next week. That has never happened before. Our overall efforts have been supported by an unprecedented coalition of doctors and nurses; hospitals, seniors’ groups and even drug companies – many of whom opposed reform in the past. And there is agreement in this chamber on about eighty percent of what needs to be done, putting us closer to the goal of reform than we have ever been.
But what we have also seen in these last months is the same partisan spectacle that only hardens the disdain many Americans have toward their own government. Instead of honest debate, we have seen scare tactics. Some have dug into unyielding ideological camps that offer no hope of compromise. Too many have used this as an opportunity to score short-term political points, even if it robs the country of our opportunity to solve a long-term challenge. And out of this blizzard of charges and counter-charges, confusion has reigned.
Well the time for bickering is over. The time for games has passed. Now is the season for action. Now is when we must bring the best ideas of both parties together, and show the American people that we can still do what we were sent here to do. Now is the time to deliver on health care.
The plan I’m announcing tonight would meet three basic goals:
It will provide more security and stability to those who have health insurance. It will provide insurance to those who don’t. And it will slow the growth of health care costs for our families, our businesses, and our government. It’s a plan that asks everyone to take responsibility for meeting this challenge – not just government and insurance companies, but employers and individuals. And it’s a plan that incorporates ideas from Senators and Congressmen; from Democrats and Republicans – and yes, from some of my opponents in both the primary and general election.
***
Here are the details that every American needs to know about this plan:
First, if you are among the hundreds of millions of Americans who already have health insurance through your job, Medicare, Medicaid, or the VA, nothing in this plan will require you or your employer to change the coverage or the doctor you have. Let me repeat this: nothing in our plan requires you to change what you have.
What this plan will do is to make the insurance you have work better for you. Under this plan, it will be against the law for insurance companies to deny you coverage because of a pre-existing condition. As soon as I sign this bill, it will be against the law for insurance companies to drop your coverage when you get sick or water it down when you need it most. They will no longer be able to place some arbitrary cap on the amount of coverage you can receive in a given year or a lifetime. We will place a limit on how much you can be charged for out-of-pocket expenses, because in the United States of America, no one should go broke because they get sick. And insurance companies will be required to cover, with no extra charge, routine checkups and preventive care, like mammograms and colonoscopies – because there’s no reason we shouldn’t be catching diseases like breast cancer and colon cancer before they get worse. That makes sense, it saves money, and it saves lives.
That’s what Americans who have health insurance can expect from this plan – more security and stability.
Now, if you’re one of the tens of millions of Americans who don’t currently have health insurance, the second part of this plan will finally offer you quality, affordable choices. If you lose your job or change your job, you will be able to get coverage. If you strike out on your own and start a small business, you will be able to get coverage. We will do this by creating a new insurance exchange – a marketplace where individuals and small businesses will be able to shop for health insurance at competitive prices. Insurance companies will have an incentive to participate in this exchange because it lets them compete for millions of new customers. As one big group, these customers will have greater leverage to bargain with the insurance companies for better prices and quality coverage. This is how large companies and government employees get affordable insurance. It’s how everyone in this Congress gets affordable insurance. And it’s time to give every American the same opportunity that we’ve given ourselves.
***
This is the plan I’m proposing. It’s a plan that incorporates ideas from many of the people in this room tonight – Democrats and Republicans. And I will continue to seek common ground in the weeks ahead. If you come to me with a serious set of proposals, I will be there to listen. My door is always open.
But know this: I will not waste time with those who have made the calculation that it’s better politics to kill this plan than improve it. I will not stand by while the special interests use the same old tactics to keep things exactly the way they are. If you misrepresent what’s in the plan, we will call you out. And I will not accept the status quo as a solution. Not this time. Not now.
Everyone in this room knows what will happen if we do nothing. Our deficit will grow. More families will go bankrupt. More businesses will close. More Americans will lose their coverage when they are sick and need it most. And more will die as a result. We know these things to be true.
That is why we cannot fail. Because there are too many Americans counting on us to succeed – the ones who suffer silently, and the ones who shared their stories with us at town hall meetings, in emails, and in letters.
##
11 Responses to “Obama Joint Session Speech On Health Care Advance Excerpts”
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© 2000-2011 Oliver Willis
So no public option, no single payer, no meaningful reforms. Can someone remind me again why I voted for the guy? I mean granted with McCain we wouldn’t even get this much, but it would have been less embarassing to the country when he folded to special interests in order to preserve and maintain a catastrophically flawed system, instituting financial penalties for people who don’t have the money to buy into it.
“He was born in Kenya”-Rep. Charles Boustany
Rex: These are excerpts. Not the whole speech.
Uh, Rex? When did Obama ever say he wanted single-payer? I know the impossibly self-righteous “more-liberal-than-thou” blogosphere already have their bitching-points ready, but can we at least know what we’re talking about and hear the ENTIRE SPEECH before we criticize?
When did Obama ever say he wanted single-payer?
I believe he did say, once upon a time, he was a supporter of single-payer. But that hasn’t been part of the current debate from day one. Anyone who is surprised it won’t come up in tonight’s speech either hasn’t been paying attention or is advocating solutions that aren’t on the table.
Fair enough, is the full text anywhere yet or do I have to wait an hour to watch it? Will he insist on public option? Only with all the recent rumblings about it not being necessary and probably not included, the pessimistic mind will read what it will.
As far as single payer, he has been in favor of it before as this article points out. Most recently he has acknowledged (though I cannot find the quote, but it was in a recent press conference/Q&A thing) that Single Payer would be the only real way to make sure everyone gets the treatment they need. His billshut explanation for his opposition to it is that it would be too disruptive to the current system. This guy ran on “Change” and is turning back from necessary reform he used to support because it might be slightly disruptive? Well suck me fideways.
Will he insist on public option?
From the news reports I’m seeing, he will support the public option. He will not insist on the public option.
@Rex
You are just like all the other whiny liberals. You want big change but don’t know how to get there.
There hasn’t been a single piece of progressive legislation in the history of the world that wasn’t bloody when it was initially voted on. None.
If Obama officially announced single-payer 30-35 Democratic Senators and all Republicans would outright oppose it, right off of the bat. There would be no consesus, the bill would fail, and all you (and other whiny liberals) would talk about is how the Republicans killed the bill.
In other words, you want Obama to talk and sound tough but actually get nothing done.
Single-payer CAN happen in this country but we need to work and build towards it. Not whine and cry over realistic work being done in the legislative process.
In closing, Rex, explain in detail how Obama is going to get all of these votes for single-payer when we can’t even get consesus over the public option in his own caucus.
I prefer arguing and fighting in the real world.
I’d like to see single-payer debated as an option. But then, I’d like to see Dennis Kucinich or Rush Holt in the White House.
Chris, I know for a fact that you don’t know this about the fantastical hypothetical you’ve constructed, but there’s already no consensus. All republicans already are opposing anything coming out of this debate, including the bills that have the dozens of concessions they’ve demanded. Single Payer could be forced through with the only concessions being to the “Blue Bitches” who need to seem all tuff n stuff because they’re reading the last election as proof that neo-conservatism is somehow the dominant school of thought. With the tide behind inevitable change, how many of them are going to unconditionally oppose a ridiculously popular and absurdly necessary reform?
Your “real world arguing nyah nyah” is going to result in concessions to the unappeasable in a system that will be worse than no reform at all. Oh, but you get to call yourself more realistic and hug yourself to sleep at night knowing that the world’s going to hell but you’re a rational (read: quick to surrender upon the pretense of perceived advantage) person. Good for you.
I’m not the only one who would rather see him go down fighting for actual change rather than struggle to spit out a hundredth of a wildfire. But then that’s my “whiny liberal” self.
In closing, Chris K., convince me why you should not tactically surrender from this debate you and I are engaging in right now. I mean its realistic that you won’t convince me that my vagina is weeping and all, so surely just stopping and calling me a nitwit would be a simpler and necessary step in the move toward a real debate.
This is the key here from what you wrote. Blue Dogs will NEVER vote for Single-Payer given our current political circus. Period. End of discussion. Blue Dogs like to be ‘liberal’ on small things like miniscul expansions to unemployment or maybe (maybe) a bone here and there on gay marraige/abortion. Healthcare? They will vote with the HC companies until they die.
Look at President Truman. He ‘went down fighting’ as you would like to say, but with nothing to show for it. We need an actual bill with something to show for it. Not a PR victory for the base but no real, concrete legislation.
So, I believe the majority of Americans will disagree with you here. Yes, single-payer would be awesome. But to pin everything on it, even if that means never making any actual progress is just silly. You have partisan lens and they blind you from actually getting work done.