President Obama takes on insurance companies during weekly address – MedCity Morning Read, Oct. 19, 2009

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WASHINGTON, D.C. – President Barack Obama criticized the tactics of insurance companies – calling their ads “deceptive and dishonest” and saying their studies are “designed to mislead the American people” – as he provided an update on health care reform efforts during his weekly radio address Saturday.

“As I speak to you today, we are closer to reforming the health care system than we have ever been in history,” the president said, four days after the Senate Finance Committee approved its $829 billion legislation.

But, he cautioned, there is more work to be done. “And there are still those who would try to kill reform at any cost,” he said.

“The history is clear: For decades, rising health care costs have unleashed havoc on families, businesses and the economy,” Obama said. “And for decades, whenever we have tried to reform the system, the insurance companies have done everything in their considerable power to stop us.”

The president argued that the insurance industry is “rolling out the big guns and breaking out their massive war chest to marshal their forces for one last fight to save the status quo.”

Not so, said Robert Zirkelbach, spokesman for industry trade group America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), Reuters reported. “We are not trying to stop reform as some have suggested. We want reform that will work and can be sustained, and we are offering solutions to address the concerns,” Zirkelbach said, according to Reuters.

Last week, AHIP reported that the Senate health care legislation would lead to annual insurance premium hikes of as much as $4,000 by 2019, according to Reuters. Democrats denied the findings of that report.

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