Facing criticism from both sides of the aisle that he’s pushing too hard and fast on health care reform, President Obama on Wednesday defended his “rush” to get it done and said Congress must take advantage of this rare opportunity.
“The stars are aligned,” Obama said in prime-time news conference, and the American people are depending on Congress to reach a compromise promptly. He wants a deal by Congress’ August recess.
“If you don’t set deadlines in this town, things don’t happen. The default position is inertia,” the president said, singling out his critics for playing political “games” with health care reform.
Reform is critical for rebuilding the economy and controlling the deficit, Obama argued. But with momentum slowing considerably in the effort to reach a deal on time, the president conceded that he wants to “do this right” and said he wouldn’t sign a bill that doesn’t achieve key objectives like reducing costs.
At the news conference, called to rally support for health care reform, Obama acknowledged that Americans are “understandably queasy” about debt and deficits — and the impact health care reform would have on both.
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Updates:
12:54 pm EDT, July 23rd, 2009 — Just 25% Now Say Stimulus Has Helped The Economy, 31% Say it Hurt
12:57 pm EDT, July 23rd, 2009 — Obama Proposes Replacing Anesthesia with Press Conferences
1:00 pm EDT, July 23rd, 2009 — Obama Destroyed His Post-Racial Theme
1:21 pm EDT, July 23rd, 2009 — Amazing Cure for Constipation Found
Obama took 6 months to make a decision about a dog for his daughters but wants to ram through in a few weeks highly complex legislation in Health Care that represents 1/6th of the largest economy in the world.
In keeping with the dog theme, this universal health care overhaul is a dog’s breakfast. Can you imagine that Obama attacked doctors for being unethical and removing body parts just for the money! Outrageous. I smell a federal special prosecutor and greedy lawyers lining up to skewer doctors. Talk about medical McCarthyism. The man is without shame.
On the other side of the coin, it seems strange that a country that can spend trillions of tax dollars on space exploration and fighting wars, has little or no money for health care of its citizens, especially the reported 48 million who have nothing.
“has little or no money for health care of its citizens, especially the reported 48 million who have nothing.”
UV it has far too much money going into Health. 16% of the US GDP is spent on Health Care and rising. Of that, about 6% is from the government…BTW 6% is about the same as Canada’s public portion, plus 3% and rising private.
However, if you look at who makes up the total of 45 million or so uninsured, 12 million to as high as 20 million of those without health insurance are illegal aliens, mostly Mexicans. Why should middle class America pay for them? At a minimum put it to a vote to see if Congress will force payment for alien care upon Americans.
As I mentioned, many young people who think they are invincible don’t buy Health coverage.. estimates are also as high as 20 million
Also there are millions of Americans who are between jobs, also changing from one health care plan to another and technically do not have health care coverage. That could be easily fixed with some backstopping or portability.
When you net it all out, let’s say perhaps 10 million ( out of 300 million people) need a serious revamp of Health coverage to fix the problem. But there is no need to turn America into the USSR … unless unless .. .the goal has nothing to do with Health. Like global warming … it is mostly about redistribution of other people’s money.
Heres an interesting report ‘Who are the uninsured’ in the states:
http://www.nchc.org/facts/coverage.shtml
Again, the many times I use to travel to the states on business, it was Canada’s universal health care that came up and greatly admired.
Its not perfect, but still something we Canadians can be proud of and any Canadian political party that wants to tamper with it except to make it better, will lose at the polls.
UV we can agree on “let’s make it better” because Canada has a relatively good base to build upon, but it needs to move away from its monopolistic practices.
But ObamaCare is on a dangerous trajectory because the US is already in deficit, adding to massive debts and your link says “Rapidly rising health insurance premiums are the main reason…blah blah blah”
Those insurance premiums represent real cost increases and are not going to just go away with ObamaCare because
- he is going to create new demand by dealing with the 45 million, and he has no plan for new productivity to take care of that
- new cures , new technology, new pharmaceuticals all add new expenditures to the system precisely because the USA is so inventive.
- The baby boomer bodies are falling apart.
Obama is killing the supply side of medicine. Why would you go into medicine now when you have Obama hectoring you that you are charging too much? As you say, Doctors are discovering they might as well return to Canada. Why would you invest in Heath Care companies when Obama is saying they are making too much profit? Have a look at the Pfizer and Merck stocks, down 40% over the last couple of years. Obama is just plain lying about excessive profitability …and profit is not a sin in any event.
“Profit is not a sin’ unless its at the consumers expense and sometimes turns out to be just plain ‘greed’ especially when theres no government oversite to see that your average citizen is protected which in part caused the present ‘made in the US’ financial crisis negatively affecting the whole world.
Therefore, ‘We the people’ in the american constitution is sometimes replaced with ‘We the greedy corporations.’
As stated before, Capitalism is not a good system but all the others are worse.
“caused the present ‘made in the US’ financial crisis negatively affecting the whole world.”
Exactly UV.
And that was brought to you by … Fannie and Freddie and the The Community and Reinvestment Act which in turn was brought to you by Washington and the likes of Barney Frank and Chris Dodd .. who unlike the greedy capitalists pigs, who got blown away , they are not only still there but are still leading the charge on the new Central Plan … Chris Dodd is writing Health Care … unbelievable!
XX millions of ‘un-insured’ Americans have faster access to better health care than any Canadian. Well, except for very rich Canadians like Liberals, and professional athletes, and well connected government employees, and the family and friends of physicians, and pets.
Caught it.
“Yup”…