US president Barack Obama has warned America will go broke if it rejects health care reform, cranking up a hard sell on an issue crucial to his ambitious domestic plans and personal political prestige.
Obama made a quick trip to his home city of Chicago on Monday to try to convince skeptical doctors of the merits of his plan to equip all Americans, including 46 million who are uninsured, with "affordable" health insurance.
"To say it as plainly as I can, health care is the single most important thing we can do for America's long-term fiscal health that is a fact," Obama told the annual meeting of the American Medical Association.
"If we do not fix our health care system, America may go the way of GM - paying more, getting less and going broke," Obama said, warning of the burden on big US employers of providing health insurance to workers.
State-run health system
Lambasting critics who claim he is out to frame a "socialised" state-run health system, Obama vowed to cut costs of existing private plans and to use preventative medicine as a way to reduce the long-term price of health care.
He also made a moral case based on the fact that despite America's immense wealth, tens of millions of people languish with no insurance whatsoever.
"We are not a nation that accepts nearly 46 million uninsured men, women and children ... we are a nation that cares for its citizens, we are a people who look out for one another."
A pitched political fight is already raging in Congress over health care reform, which confounded the previous Democratic president Bill Clinton, and was a central plank of Obama's 2008 campaign program.
If the president prevails, he will bolster his political muscle for key political battles to come on all manner of domestic and foreign policy issues.
Obama's foes, though, sense a chance to cripple his young presidency by inflicting a damaging defeat -- much as happened to Clinton in 1993.
Now or never
The White House argues that America has reached a "now or never" moment on health care reform, and proposes a new "public" program to compete with private insurance plans many US workers get through their employers.
Reform proponents argue that the burden of fast-rising health care costs is becoming too great on employers at a time of economic crisis and when families are struggling to make ends meet.
Obama critics claim reform plans would starve patients of choice, erode the quality of health care and saddle the industry with an inefficient new government bureaucracy.
Republican congressman Tom Price, who is also a physician, claimed Obama wanted to take away the decision on appropriate health care from doctors and patients and hand it to the government.
"The number one concern is where are medical decisions going to be made?" said Price on a conference call with reporters.
Critics also argue that with the US budget deficit soaring to a projected $US1.8 trillion ($A2.23 trillion) this year, the government cannot afford to intervene in the health care market.
Republicans reject any government-run component for health care, which they liken unfavourably to national health systems in Canada and Britain.
Even some senior Democrats doubt the votes in Congress are there to support any form of government intervention.
"For virtually every Republican, a government plan is a non-starter," said Mitch McConnell, the top Republican in the Senate on Sunday on the CBS program, Face the Nation.
Kent Conrad, the chairman of the influential Senate Budget Committee, who will play a key role in the reform debate, concurred.
"You have got to attract some Republicans, as well as holding virtually all the Democrats together," Conrad said on CNN's State of the Union program.
"That, I don't believe, is possible with the pure public option. I don't think the votes are there."
Non-profit network
Conrad has suggested a new idea - a network of non-profit health insurance cooperatives free of direct government control, to bypass critics of a federal health plan.
A new Rasmussen Reports poll on Monday found voters split on the reform effort. Forty-one per cent of those asked said they backed the establishment of a government-run firm to compete with private insurers.
An identical portion - 41 per cent - disagreed.
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[abstract] => US president Barack Obama has warned America will go broke if it rejects health care reform.
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US president Barack Obama has warned America will go broke if it rejects health care reform, cranking up a hard sell on an issue crucial to his ambitious domestic plans and personal political prestige.
Obama made a quick trip to his home city of Chicago on Monday to try to convince skeptical doctors of the merits of his plan to equip all Americans, including 46 million who are uninsured, with "affordable" health insurance.
"To say it as plainly as I can, health care is the single most important thing we can do for America's long-term fiscal health that is a fact," Obama told the annual meeting of the American Medical Association.
"If we do not fix our health care system, America may go the way of GM - paying more, getting less and going broke," Obama said, warning of the burden on big US employers of providing health insurance to workers.
State-run health system
Lambasting critics who claim he is out to frame a "socialised" state-run health system, Obama vowed to cut costs of existing private plans and to use preventative medicine as a way to reduce the long-term price of health care.
He also made a moral case based on the fact that despite America's immense wealth, tens of millions of people languish with no insurance whatsoever.
"We are not a nation that accepts nearly 46 million uninsured men, women and children ... we are a nation that cares for its citizens, we are a people who look out for one another."
A pitched political fight is already raging in Congress over health care reform, which confounded the previous Democratic president Bill Clinton, and was a central plank of Obama's 2008 campaign program.
If the president prevails, he will bolster his political muscle for key political battles to come on all manner of domestic and foreign policy issues.
Obama's foes, though, sense a chance to cripple his young presidency by inflicting a damaging defeat -- much as happened to Clinton in 1993.
Now or never
The White House argues that America has reached a "now or never" moment on health care reform, and proposes a new "public" program to compete with private insurance plans many US workers get through their employers.
Reform proponents argue that the burden of fast-rising health care costs is becoming too great on employers at a time of economic crisis and when families are struggling to make ends meet.
Obama critics claim reform plans would starve patients of choice, erode the quality of health care and saddle the industry with an inefficient new government bureaucracy.
Republican congressman Tom Price, who is also a physician, claimed Obama wanted to take away the decision on appropriate health care from doctors and patients and hand it to the government.
"The number one concern is where are medical decisions going to be made?" said Price on a conference call with reporters.
Critics also argue that with the US budget deficit soaring to a projected $US1.8 trillion ($A2.23 trillion) this year, the government cannot afford to intervene in the health care market.
Republicans reject any government-run component for health care, which they liken unfavourably to national health systems in Canada and Britain.
Even some senior Democrats doubt the votes in Congress are there to support any form of government intervention.
"For virtually every Republican, a government plan is a non-starter," said Mitch McConnell, the top Republican in the Senate on Sunday on the CBS program, Face the Nation.
Kent Conrad, the chairman of the influential Senate Budget Committee, who will play a key role in the reform debate, concurred.
"You have got to attract some Republicans, as well as holding virtually all the Democrats together," Conrad said on CNN's State of the Union program.
"That, I don't believe, is possible with the pure public option. I don't think the votes are there."
Non-profit network
Conrad has suggested a new idea - a network of non-profit health insurance cooperatives free of direct government control, to bypass critics of a federal health plan.
A new Rasmussen Reports poll on Monday found voters split on the reform effort. Forty-one per cent of those asked said they backed the establishment of a government-run firm to compete with private insurers.
An identical portion - 41 per cent - disagreed.
[start_date] => 16 June 2009 | 08:07:23 AM
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[label] => Obama pledges $300 billion for American health care
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[headline] => Obama pledges $300 billion for American health care
[abstract] => US President Barack Obama has said he has found more than $US300 billion that could help his government make health care available to all Americans.
[content] =>
US President Barack Obama said Saturday he had found more than $US300 billion ($A366.39 billion) that could help his government make health care available to all Americans.
The announcement means that the president's health care reform project, estimated to cost around $US1 trillion ($A1.22 trillion), would be almost fully financed.
"And I have made a firm commitment that health care reform will not add to the federal deficit over the next decade," Obama said in his weekly radio address.
He said that to keep this commitment his administration had already identified how to pay for the $US635 billion ($A775.53 billion) down payment on reform detailed in the budget proposal submitted to Congress earlier this year.
"So today, I am announcing an additional $US313 billion ($A382.27 billion) in savings that will rein in unnecessary spending, and increase efficiency and the quality of care - savings that will ensure that we have nearly $US950 billion ($A1.16 trillion) set aside to offset the cost of health care reform over the next ten years," the president pointed out.
The president noted the amount included over $US300 billion ($A366.39 billion) that will be saved through changes like reducing Medicare overpayments to private insurers and rooting out waste in the Medicare and Medicaid health programs that serve the elderly and the poor, respectively.
Congress approval
The president wants Congress to approve his health care reform proposals by the end of the year in order to fulfill one his key campaign promises - providing health care to the 46 million Americans, some 15 per cent of the population who currently don't have any medical coverage.
But he also wants to reduce the budget deficit by half by 2013.
Obama acknowledged that health care reform will require additional costs in the short term in order to reduce spending in the long-term.
In his address, Obama noted that Medicare and Medicaid pose one of the greatest threats to the US federal deficit and could leave the country "with a mountain of debt" that future generations would not be able to pay.
"We cannot continue down this path," he noted. "I do not accept a future where Americans forego health care because they can't pay for it, and more and more families go without coverage at all."
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[articledate] => 14 June 2009
[articletime] => 14 June 2009
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