President Barack Obama was back defending his historic health care reforms Wednesday, as key elements of the unpopular law came into effect despite Republican pledges to dismantle the new system. The legislation was helping end the “horrendous” vulnerability of millions of uninsured Americans who had been denied coverage, unfairly dropped from company plans, or were simply unable to afford insurance, Obama said.
Health care reform was “the most important patients bill of rights that we’ve ever seen in our history,” Obama told a backyard meeting of residents in the town of Falls Church, Virginia. Obama signed the bill into law six months ago on March 23 and many of its provisions come into law on Thursday — less than six weeks before key mid-term congressional elections could inflict heavy losses on Obama’s Democratic Party. Insurance companies can no longer drop clients once they become ill, impose a lifetime limit on how much they will pay out to a client, or refuse coverage to children with pre-existing conditions.
But Republicans, who may win back the House of the Representatives from Democratic control and are also eyeing their chances in the Senate, have vowed to repeal the reforms which remain unpopular across a swath of the nation. Obama vowed to fight back, and pointed out that the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has said the measure will save taxpayers mountains of cash at a time of steep deficits.
“Why would you want to repeal something that the CBO says will save us a trillion dollars, if you’re serious about the deficit?” Obama told his handpicked audience at a local home.
“It doesn’t make sense. It makes sense in terms of politics and polls, it doesn’t make sense in terms of actually making people’s life better.”
The White House, in a statement hours earlier, said the Patient’s Bill of Rights put “an end to some of the worst insurance company abuses, and puts consumers, not insurance companies, in control.”
The president also stressed the fact that children may now remain on their parents’ plans until the age of 26. Obama has pledged that the previsions, part of the phasing-in of the law over several years, will offer greater consumer protection to people who might otherwise be either denied or even lose their health coverage. After more than a year of intense political battles in Washington the health bill passed Congress despite almost unanimous Republican opposition. But Democrats now face stiff resistance on the issue from Republicans, who insist it is both too expensive and a draconian expansion of federal government.
Paradoxically, the reforms which should bring insurance coverage to 30 million previously uninsured Americans, remain unpopular. One poll released earlier this month by The New York Times and CBS showed 49.3 percent of Americans opposed the reform, with only 37 percent approving.
The White House has argued that this is because the reforms have only been introduced gradually. And Obama aimed to counter the argument that the reform was too costly, arguing “the single biggest driver of our deficit is the ever-escalating cost of health care.”
He pointed to the substantial tax breaks offered to some four million small businesses “if they start providing health insurance to their employees.”
Obama’s backyard address was nothing new; he employed the tactic last month in the heartland state of Ohio, where he spoke at the home of Americans whose personal stories carefully illustrated the benefits of health care reform. That address was staged on the home turf of House Minority Leader John Boehner, who has helped lead vehement Republican opposition to the health care law. Should Republicans regain control of the House of Representatives after the November 2 election, they could, if not repeal the law altogether, at least undercut it by blocking the necessary funds for its implementation.
“They’ll get not one dime from us. Not a dime,” Boehner told the Cincinnati Enquirer early this month. “There is no fixing this.”
Washington, Sept 22, 2010 (AFP)
