Text of Obama's speech to Congress on health care reform

[standin]

Seems C-span servers are getting hit.
The speech keeps going down.
Oh, well... Just watch it later.
Da internets are cool like that.

[Kristy]

Then there's the problem of rising costs. We spend one-and-a-half times more per person on health care than any other country, but we aren't any healthier for it. This is one of the reasons that insurance premiums have gone up three times faster than wages. It's why so many employers — especially small businesses — are forcing their employees to pay more for insurance, or are dropping their coverage entirely. It's why so many aspiring entrepreneurs cannot afford to open a business in the first place, and why American businesses that compete internationally — like our automakers — are at a huge disadvantage. And it's why those of us with health insurance are also paying a hidden and growing tax for those without it — about $1000 per year that pays for somebody else's emergency room and charitable care.

Finally, our health care system is placing an unsustainable burden on taxpayers. When health care costs grow at the rate they have, it puts greater pressure on programs like Medicare and Medicaid. If we do nothing to slow these skyrocketing costs, we will eventually be spending more on Medicare and Medicaid than every other government program combined. Put simply, our health care problem is our deficit problem. Nothing else even comes close.

These are the facts. Nobody disputes them. We know we must reform this system. The question is how.

When I read this I can't but help to think of this:

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Ry's "Coodercaster" speaks volumes to me (and for all you guitar geeks his solo stars around 4m5s) of which Obama's speech never can; from the right to the preachers and doctors. If you ever get the chance to see Ry play live I highly recommend you do so. Might not fix America's soaring health care costs or rising unemployment rate, but Ry will give your sorry ass a much clearer perspective than any politician ever will.

[sadaist]

FACT CHECK: Obama uses iffy math on deficit pledge

FACT CHECK: Obama uses iffy math on deficit pledge - Yahoo! News

By CALVIN WOODWARD and ERICA WERNER, Associated Press Writers Calvin Woodward And Erica Werner, Associated Press Writers – Wed Sep 9, 11:14 pm ET

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama used only-in-Washington accounting Wednesday when he promised to overhaul the nation's health care system without adding "one dime" to the deficit. By conventional arithmetic, Democratic plans would drive up the deficit by billions of dollars.

The president's speech to Congress contained a variety of oversimplifications and omissions in laying out what he wants to do about health insurance.

A look at some of Obama's claims and how they square with the facts or the fuller story:

OBAMA: "I will not sign a plan that adds one dime to our deficits either now or in the future. Period."

THE FACTS: Though there's no final plan yet, the White House and congressional Democrats already have shown they're ready to skirt the no-new-deficits pledge.

House Democrats offered a bill that the Congressional Budget Office said would add $220 billion to the deficit over 10 years. But Democrats and Obama administration officials claimed the bill actually was deficit-neutral. They said they simply didn't have to count $245 billion of it — the cost of adjusting Medicare reimbursement rates so physicians don't face big annual pay cuts.

Their reasoning was that they already had decided to exempt this "doc fix" from congressional rules that require new programs to be paid for. In other words, it doesn't have to be paid for because they decided it doesn't have to be paid for.

The administration also said that since Obama already had included the doctor payment in his 10-year budget proposal, it didn't have to be counted again.

That aside, the long-term prognosis for costs of the health care legislation has not been good.

CBO Director Douglas Elmendorf had this to say in July: "We do not see the sort of fundamental changes that would be necessary to reduce the trajectory of federal health spending by a significant amount."

___

OBAMA: "Nothing in this plan will require you or your employer to change the coverage or the doctor you have."

THE FACTS: That's correct, as far as it goes. But neither can the plan guarantee that people can keep their current coverage. Employers sponsor coverage for most families, and they'd be free to change their health plans in ways that workers may not like, or drop insurance altogether. The Congressional Budget Office analyzed the health care bill written by House Democrats and said that by 2016 some 3 million people who now have employer-based care would lose it because their employers would decide to stop offering it.

In the past Obama repeatedly said, "If you like your health care plan, you'll be able to keep your health care plan, period." Now he's stopping short of that unconditional guarantee by saying nothing in the plan "requires" any change.

___

OBAMA: "The reforms I'm proposing would not apply to those who are here illegally." One congressman, South Carolina Republican Joe Wilson, shouted "You lie!" from his seat in the House chamber when Obama made this assertion. Wilson later apologized.

THE FACTS: The facts back up Obama. The House version of the health care bill explicitly prohibits spending any federal money to help illegal immigrants get health care coverage. Illegal immigrants could buy private health insurance, as many do now, but wouldn't get tax subsidies to help them. Still, Republicans say there are not sufficient citizenship verification requirements to ensure illegal immigrants are excluded from benefits they are not due.

___

OBAMA: "Don't pay attention to those scary stories about how your benefits will be cut. ... That will never happen on my watch. I will protect Medicare."

THE FACTS: Obama and congressional Democrats want to pay for their health care plans in part by reducing Medicare payments to providers by more than $500 billion over 10 years. The cuts would largely hit hospitals and Medicare Advantage, the part of the Medicare program operated through private insurance companies.

Although wasteful spending in Medicare is widely acknowledged, many experts believe some seniors almost certainly would see reduced benefits from the cuts. That's particularly true for the 25 percent of Medicare users covered through Medicare Advantage.

Supporters contend that providers could absorb the cuts by improving how they operate and wouldn't have to reduce benefits or pass along costs. But there's certainly no guarantee they wouldn't.

___

OBAMA: Requiring insurance companies to cover preventive care like mammograms and colonoscopies "makes sense, it saves money, and it saves lives."

THE FACTS: Studies have shown that much preventive care — particularly tests like the ones Obama mentions — actually costs money instead of saving it. That's because detecting acute diseases like breast cancer in their early stages involves testing many people who would never end up developing the disease. The costs of a large number of tests, even if they're relatively cheap, will outweigh the costs of caring for the minority of people who would have ended up getting sick without the testing.

The Congressional Budget Office wrote in August: "The evidence suggests that for most preventive services, expanded utilization leads to higher, not lower, medical spending overall."

That doesn't mean preventive care doesn't make sense or save lives. It just doesn't save money.

___

OBAMA: "If you lose your job or change your job, you will be able to get coverage. If you strike out on your own and start a small business, you will be able to get coverage."

THE FACTS: It's not just a matter of being able to get coverage. Most people would have to get coverage under the law, if his plan is adopted.

In his speech, Obama endorsed mandatory coverage for individuals, an approach he did not embrace as a candidate.

He proposed during the campaign — as he does now — that larger businesses be required to offer insurance to workers or else pay into a fund. But he rejected the idea of requiring individuals to obtain insurance. He said people would get insurance without being forced to do so by the law, if coverage were made affordable. And he repeatedly criticized his Democratic primary rival, Hillary Rodham Clinton, for proposing to mandate coverage.

"To force people to get health insurance, you've got to have a very harsh penalty," he said in a February 2008 debate.

Now, he says, "individuals will be required to carry basic health insurance — just as most states require you to carry auto insurance."

He proposes a hardship waiver, exempting from the requirement those who cannot afford coverage despite increased federal aid.

___

OBAMA: "There are now more than 30 million American citizens who cannot get coverage."

THE FACTS: Obama time and again has referred to the number of uninsured as 46 million, a figure based on year-old Census data. The new number is based on an analysis by the Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured, which concluded that about two-thirds of Americans without insurance are poor or near poor. "These individuals are less likely to be offered employer-sponsored coverage or to be able to afford to purchase their own coverage," the report said. By using the new figure, Obama avoids criticism that he is including individuals, particularly healthy young people, who choose not to obtain health insurance.

[Dr. Love]

Whispers: Someone should mention to the lady not sitting behind a desk on Obama's right hand side, she should wear a longer skirt, a fuller skirt, pants or gosh even a scort would have been better.

Joe Biden? Or did you mean to the right of Obama?

[binnie]

Edited because of my own stupidity

[ZahZoo]

Edited because of my own stupidity

I commend you for setting an example for BlackFlag...

[Nitro Express]

Have you looked up the word socialism?

It's where the community pays into a pool that pays for community services. Like in Norway I had to have dental work done and when I went to pay for it they said I was already covered by the Norwegian health plan. I said I was not a Norwegian citizen and they said it didn't matter.

So let's apply this model to the banks. They got their incompetance and corruption paid for by the social pool of money called taxes. The little guy won't get such he/she still has to pay their debt to the banks and the ones with no debt still get screwed because they will be paying a higher tax bill but see no benefit from it whatsoever. So it's socalism for the rich bankers because their institutions get bailed out and they pay themselves handsomely from this and the little guy still has to fare for themselves in a non-bailout world.

[Nitro Express]

To show you what a scam this was we could have just given everyone with a social security number 18 or older $150,000. This would cost the government around $100 billion. People could pay their debts, buy some healthcare, invest it or whatever. This would stimulate the economy more than a tens of trillions of dollars banker bailout. We could buy the personal debt and save money instead of giving it to the banks.

We should have just let the banks fail and then give some money to the citizens directly. We would actually be in better shape than we are now.

[GAR]

I saw the speech and hear alot of Democratic pep-rallying without any problem-solving like he still thinks he's addressing the AFL-CIO in Ohio last week.

He's backed into the corner, and he's coming out swinging! He's doing a lot of yelling, breaking character. I like that we're seeing some fundamental expression.

What I didn't see here, still, was the laundry list of goodies buried all over this plan as payback to Big Labor Unions that own his ass. Whther you were for or against, or neutral to mandatory Federal Health Insurance which is what this is all about.. I urge you to read the hitpiece done on it by the Wall Street Journal opinion editorial by Mark Mix on all the union power grabs built into the Mandatory Health Insurance bill.

Mark Mix: Read the Union Health-Care Label - WSJ.com

• <small>SEPTEMBER 10, 2009, 9:35 A.M. ET</small>

<!-- ID: SB10001424052970203440104574400571702189240 --> <!-- TYPE: Commentary (U.S.) --> <!-- DISPLAY-NAME: OPINION --> <!-- PUBLICATION: The Wall Street Journal Interactive Edition --> <!-- DATE: 2009-09-09 19:13 --> <!-- COPYRIGHT: Dow Jones & Company, Inc. --> <!-- ORIGINAL-ID: --> <!-- article start --> <!-- CODE=STATISTIC SYMBOL=FREE CODE=SUBJECT SYMBOL=OPIN --> Read the Union Health-Care Label

Get ready for Detroit-style labor relations in our hospitals.


By MARK MIX

In the heated debates on health-care reform, not enough attention is being paid to the huge financial windfalls ObamaCare will dole out to unions—or to the provisions in the various bills in Congress that will help bring about the forced unionization of the health-care industry.
Tucked away in thousands of pages of complex new rules, regulations and mandates are special privileges and giveaways that could have devastating consequences for the health-care sector and the American economy at large.
The Senate version opens the door to implement forced unionization schemes pursued by former Govs. Rod Blagojevich of Illinois in 2005 and Gray Davis of California in 1999. Both men repaid tremendous political debts to Andy Stern and his Service Employees International Union (SEIU) by reclassifying state-reimbursed in-home health-care (and child-care) contractors as state employees—and forcing them to pay union dues.
Following this playbook, the Senate bill creates a "personal care attendants workforce advisory panel" that will likely impose union affiliation to qualify for a newly created "community living assistance services and support (class)" reimbursement plan.
The current House version of ObamaCare (H.R. 3200) goes much further. Section 225(A) grants Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius tremendous discretionary authority to regulate health-care workers "under the public health insurance option." Monopoly bargaining and compulsory union dues may quickly become a required standard resulting in potentially hundreds of thousands of doctors and nurses across the country being forced into unions.
Ms. Sebelius will be taking her marching orders from the numerous union officials who are guaranteed seats on the various federal panels (such as the personal care panel mentioned above) charged with recommending health-care policies. Big Labor will play a central role in directing federal health-care policy affecting hundreds of thousands of doctors, surgeons and nurses.
Consider Kaiser Permanente, the giant, managed-care organization that has since 1997 proudly touted its labor-management "partnership" in scores of workplaces. Union officials play an essentially co-equal role in running many Kaiser facilities. AFL-CIO President John Sweeney called the Kaiser plan "a framework for what every health care delivery system should do" at a July 24 health-care forum outside of Washington, D.C.
The House bill has a $10 billion provision to bail out insolvent union health-care plans. It also creates a lucrative professional-development grant program for health-care workers that effectively blackballs nonunion medical facilities from participation. The training funds in this program must be administered jointly with a labor organization—a scenario not unlike the U.S. Department of Labor's grants for construction apprenticeship programs, which have turned into a cash cow for construction industry union officials on the order of hundreds of millions of dollars each year.
There's more. Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus has suggested that the federal government could pay for health-care reform by taxing American workers' existing health-care benefits—but he would exempt union-negotiated health-care plans. Under Mr. Baucus's scheme, the government could impose costs of up to $20,000 per employee on nonunion businesses already struggling to afford health care plans.
Mr. Baucus's proposal would give union officials another tool to pressure employers into turning over their employees to Big Labor. Rather than provide the lavish benefits required by Obamacare, employers could allow a union to come in and negotiate less costly benefits than would otherwise be required. Such plans could be continuously exempted.
Americans are unlikely to support granting unions more power than they already have in the health-care field. History shows union bosses could abuse their power to shut down medical facilities with sick-outs and strikes; force doctors, nurses and in-home care providers to abandon their patients; dictate terms and conditions of employment; and impose a failed, Detroit-style management model on the entire health-care field.
ObamaCare is a Trojan Horse for more forced unionization.
Mr. Mix is president of the National Right to Work Committee.

[Nitro Express]

Do we really want the people responsible for the banker bailout fiasco to micro manage our healthcare? They tend to make existing problems worse and cost the little guy plenty. We will still have the same insurance companies but the govt. will now have the power to force you to buy a policy. Insurance and big pharma will be involved because they have the money to bribe the politicians. I wonder how much they gave to Obama's campaign. As far as I'm concerned the govt. hasn't proven itself trustworthy of anything so why give them more power?

[Nitro Express]

My question is what are we really voting on here? There are several healthcare bills and they are constantly changing. They just want the power and authority and then the details will be decided later.

[GAR]

My question is what are we really voting on here?

the legislature under consideration is about mandatory health insurance.

everyone will be forced to have it whether they want it or not, and if they do not want it they are taxed for it anyways and then penalized on top of that for not partaking.

[GAR]

600 billion dollars in savings.. how about giving that to the taxpayer anyways.. saying they can find it, therefore the plan won't cost anything.

that's 1/6th of the fucking GPN of the total US economy: impossible if you can read, possible if you're a black welfare queen seeing the doctor all the time with your baby-daddy kids.. all the time

[jhale667]

Was the speech showing at the library?

e a black welfare queen seeing the doctor all the time with your baby-daddy kids.. all the time

That's not a very nice thing to say about your mom, spunk-bucket.

[kwame k]

Do we really want the people responsible for the banker bailout fiasco to micro manage our healthcare? They tend to make existing problems worse and cost the little guy plenty. We will still have the same insurance companies but the govt. will now have the power to force you to buy a policy. Insurance and big pharma will be involved because they have the money to bribe the politicians. I wonder how much they gave to Obama's campaign. As far as I'm concerned the govt. hasn't proven itself trustworthy of anything so why give them more power?

Why can't it be more like public colleges and private colleges.
You can have both private and public options. As far as mandatory health insurance, I don't think you'll ever see that happen or enforced. If you're on welfare you have no money for health care plus you have state funded health care so what will change there?

What type of health care will I be forced to get? How will they collect it?