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Obama outlines health-care reform strategy

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“The time for bickering is over. The time for games has passed. 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 on health care,” President Barack Obama told the nation Wednesday night in an address to Congress in which he laid out his health-care reform plan, which reads as a bipartisan initiative including a public-exchange option and reforms aimed at improving the existing private-insurance system.

The plan is bound to rile up liberals in Obama’s electoral base who have been advocating for a single-payer system that would have the federal government in charge of providing health-care coverage. Obama said the left’s push for single-payer and the ideas from some on the right to end the employer-based health-insurance system in favor of an unfettered free market where individuals would be left to buy insurance completely on their own would “represent a radical shift that would disrupt the health care most people currently have.”

“Since health care represents one-sixth of our economy, I believe it makes more sense to build on what works and fix what doesn’t, rather than try to build an entirely new system from scratch,” Obama said.

 

The plan

The Obama reform proposal can be broken down into three major component parts:

– “If you are among the hundreds of millions of Americans who already have health insurance through your job, Medicare, Medicaid, or the VA, nothing in this plan will require you or your employer to change the coverage or the doctor you have,” Obama said.
Under the plan from Obama, it would be against the law for insurance companies to deny coverage based on a pre-existing condition. “As soon as I sign this bill, it will be against the law for insurance companies to drop your coverage when you get sick or water it down when you need it most,” Obama said. “They will no longer be able to place some arbitrary cap on the amount of coverage you can receive in a given year or a lifetime. We will place a limit on how much you can be charged for out-of-pocket expenses, because in the United States of America, no one should go broke because they get sick.”
Insurance companies would also be required to cover routine checkups and preventive care, like mammograms and colonoscopies – “because there’s no reason we shouldn’t be catching diseases like breast cancer and colon cancer before they get worse. That makes sense, it saves money, and it saves lives,” Obama said.
“That’s what Americans who have health insurance can expect from this plan – more security and stability,” Obama said.

– Part two of the Obama plan creates a new insurance exchange – “a marketplace where individuals and small businesses will be able to shop for health insurance at competitive prices,” as Obama described it in his address.
Insurance companies will be able to participate in the exchange, and will have the incentive to do so “because it lets them compete for millions of new customers,” Obama said.
“As one big group, these customers will have greater leverage to bargain with the insurance companies for better prices and quality coverage. This is how large companies and government employees get affordable insurance. It’s how everyone in this Congress gets affordable insurance. And it’s time to give every American the same opportunity that we’ve given ourselves,” Obama said.

Families and small businesses will be eligible for tax credits to supplement their purchase of insurance in the exchange, which Obama said would be built up over the course of the next four years, “which will give us time to do it right,” the president said.
“In the meantime, for those Americans who can’t get insurance today because they have pre-existing medical conditions, we will immediately offer low-cost coverage that will protect you against financial ruin if you become seriously ill. This was a good idea when Sen. John McCain proposed it in the campaign, it’s a good idea now, and we should embrace it,” Obama said.

– Part three: Individuals will be required to carry basic health insurance – “just as most states require you to carry auto insurance,” Obama said.
“Likewise, businesses will be required to either offer their workers health care, or chip in to help cover the cost of their workers,” the president said.

There will be a hardship waiver for people who can’t afford coverage, “and 95 percent of all small businesses, because of their size and narrow profit margin, would be exempt from these requirements,” Obama said.

“But we cannot have large businesses and individuals who can afford coverage game the system by avoiding responsibility to themselves or their employees. Improving our health care system only works if everybody does their part,” Obama said.

 

The costs

Obama estimated the cost to federal taxpayers for his reform plan at $900 billion over the next 10 years – “less than we have spent on the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and less than the tax cuts for the wealthiest few Americans that Congress passed at the beginning of the previous administration,” the president said.

“Most of these costs will be paid for with money already being spent – but spent badly – in the existing health care system,” Obama said.

“The plan will not add to our deficit. The middle class will realize greater security, not higher taxes. And if we are able to slow the growth of health care costs by just one-tenth of one percent each year, it will actually reduce the deficit by $4 trillion over the long term,” Obama said.

“I will not sign a plan that adds one dime to our deficits – either now or in the future. Period. And to prove that I’m serious, there will be a provision in this plan that requires us to come forward with more spending cuts if the savings we promised don’t materialize. Part of the reason I faced a trillion dollar deficit when I walked in the door of the White House is because too many initiatives over the last decade were not paid for – from the Iraq War to tax breaks for the wealthy. I will not make that same mistake with health care,” Obama said.

 

– Story by Chris Graham

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