Pres. Barack Obama stumping for health care reform in Green Bay, Wis., in June
SHAKER HEIGHTS, Ohio — President Barack Obama has hit the campaign trail again, this time stumping for immediate legislative action to reform the nation’s health care system.
President Obama will give his health care reform message to Greater Cleveland Thursday afternoon during a town hall meeting at Shaker Heights High School.
Reforming health care became an omnipresent issue during Obama’s presidential campaign last year. Soon after his inauguration, the president began pressuring Congress to act on his campaign promise to overhaul the nation’s costly and less-than-efficient system, which fails to cover about 50 million Americans with health insurance.
Obama has convened White House meetings with health industry executives, extracting promises to lower their prices in the hope of stemming escalating health care costs. He’s met with labor leaders and consumer advocates to get the word out about his proposed health insurance exchange in which a government-sponsored plan would compete with private plans.
All along, he’s prodded congressional leaders to act quickly to provide relief for American families who can’t afford health coverage or care. He wants Senate and House legislation on his desk by Aug. 7 when Congress recesses for the summer.
Concerned that public opinion was turning against reform, Obama on Monday took the lead in the campaign, trying to convince Americans that the nation cannot afford to put off fixing health care — again. An attempt by the Bill Clinton administration to reform health care in the early 1990s failed.
But hours away from a prime-time news conference on health reform Wednesday evening, CNN released its latest poll-of-polls on the president’s handling of the reform debate. Just 47 percent of Americans polled said they approved of his reform efforts, while 44 percent said they disapproved. Over the weekend, a Republican senator commented that health care reform may become Obama’s political undoing. The president countered by criticizing the senator for putting politics before health care reform.
While Obama is a master at setting the big-picture agenda on health care reform, he seems short on the nitty-gritty details of paying for the reform. One Democrat-led proposal to tax health care benefits provided by employers would cause Obama to break a campaign promise to avoid raising taxes on middle-class Americans.
[Photo credit: June 11, 2009, White House photo by Chuck Kennedy]
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Earlier, the revised HELP BILL with the public option and employer mandatory has got a green light from the CBO, yet still, a new ‘incomplete’ analysis of emerging House legislation said it would increase deficits by $239 billion over a decade.
But, CBO does not score any savings from prevention / wellness and the medical IT and the like, even as Prevention / Wellness is an actual and essential part of the savings, without which the reform would be meaningless.
Prevention / Wellness program can be compared to the ‘levee’ in flood time. Let’s just imagine the cost before disaster and after.
And the company without IT system might be messed up with lots of paper works and hardly survive in the business.
It may be hard to assess the specific number on those parts, even so, at least the substantive amount of remaining $239 billion over a decade could be paid for and the remainder of it would be manageable over time one way or another, I think.
And I think the other things such as ‘potential stem cell effect’, ‘mental stress relief’, ‘improved productivity / consumer confidence’, and ‘massive job creation’, ‘stock price effect’ and etc considered, the reform might be within reach. Most importantly, a few years later, if the excessive war and military spending goes toward the health care program, the cost issue does not matter at all, I think.
Edward M. Kennedy argues, the perfect should not be the enemy of the good.
Thank You !
Comment by HSR0601 — July 22, 2009 @ 3:27 pm
[...] since he’s arriving in Cleveland on Thursday, we extend a special open invitation to you, Mr. President, to return to Cleveland on Aug. 27 and [...]
Comment by Announcing the first annual MedCity News medical cornhole tournament : MedCity News — July 22, 2009 @ 5:51 pm
[...] medical records and a spin through its top-ranked heart center. He’ll follow that up with a very public town-hall meeting in suburban Shaker Heights to continue to sell health-care reform (MedCity News’ Mary Vanac [...]
Comment by Obama in Ohio: A lot of sell, but not a lot of substance — MedCity Morning Read, July 23, 2009 : MedCity News — July 23, 2009 @ 8:13 am
[...] to our in-progress coverage of President Obama’s appearance and health-care centered town hall meeting in Greater Cleveland. Above you is the White [...]
Comment by Barack Obama: Live : MedCity News — July 23, 2009 @ 2:00 pm
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