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Obama makes plea to Congress over affordable health care for millions
Paul Thompson in Washington10 Sep 2009
President Obama made an impassioned plea for America to accept his planned shake-up of the health care system..
He called on politicians to put aside their differences to join him in bringing affordable health care to millions of Americans.
"I am not the first president to take up this cause, but I am determined to be the last," Mr Obama said to a standing ovation from members of Congress.
"Our collective failure to meet this challenge - year after year, decade after decade - has led us to a breaking point," he said in an hour-long speech shown live on TV and broadcast across the US yesterday.
Since announcing his planned shake-up over three months ago America has been split over his proposals, in particular the public option which would create something similar to the NHS.
Mr Obama said he was open to suggestions, but he would like to see a Government-run health scheme - an idea that has attracted huge criticism.
With so much confusion surrounding his plans Mr Obama decided to sell the country on the need to reform the health care system.
Almost 50 million people in the US do not have any health coverage while millions of others face rising bills.
In his speech Mr Obama said health care should meet three basic goals: more security and stability for those with insurance, access to insurance for without cover and ways to slow the cost of health care.
He said: "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."
As he spoke, Senator Edward Kennedy's widow Vicki, a champion of expanded health care, sat in the front row with First Lady Michelle Obama.
The president had begun his address by asking for a moment's silence to remember the veteran Democrat who died of brain cancer two weeks ago.
Before his death, Senator Kennedy wrote a letter to the president in which he described the fight for health care reform as "the cause of my life".
But he said he had faith that Mr Obama "would stay with the cause until it is won".
The Senator wrote: "I felt confident in these closing days that while I will not be there when it happens, you will be the president who at long last signs into law the health care reform that is the great unfinished business of our society."
Mr Obama told Congress the stalled debate had brought the country to breaking point, with soaring health costs burdening many Americans with extreme financial hardship.
"These are not primarily people on welfare. These are middle-class Americans," he added.
He was forced to use part of his address to correct many of the lies that have been spread by his opponents over the health care plan.
He said it would cost close to $900 billion over the next ten years but added it was "less than we have spent on the Iraq and Afghanistan wars."
The president said failure was not an option: "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 letters."
Reader views (1)
It's not the improved healthcare practices that I object to, no half reasonable man/woman, and certainly not an RN, could. That is nothing more than a political pressure gambit in common use by all political parties to put opponents on the defensive (much like implying it's nurses and doctors being laid off in NHS cuts exclusively - which is an insult to the other workers, but that's another gripe). It's the hard, self perpetuating left wing politics that Obama and Pelosi have riddled the proposals with that I and others like me are against.
The people you see shouting and raving, so lovingly portrayed in America's predominantly left leaning press? That's called fear. People either cower and hide, or they come out fighting when they are afraid. It ain't a bunch of crazies, but 99.9% people who are trying to be heard by the 'leaders' who have decided to do what the party wants rather than what the voting public wants.
I always thought democracy was essentially decision making from the bottom, up - how's that for naive. Socialism has always shown a predeliction for top, down dictates - using 'democracy' as a convenient tool only.
- Rogan, Irving, 10/09/2009 19:46
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