Obama ‘OK’ With Missing August Deadline
EmailABC News’ Rachel Martin, Jon Garcia and Karen Travers report:
August – for months that was the goal the president set for Congress to work out a bi-partisan reform bill that would overhaul the country’s entire health care system, providing health care to millions of uninsured Americans. A president can dream. Today, speaking at a town hall meeting outside Cleveland, Ohio, Obama moved the goal posts.
“We just heard today that we may not be able to get the bill out of the Senate by the end of August, or the beginning of August. That’s OK. I just want people to keep on working, just keep working,” said the president. “I want to sign a bill, and I want it done by the end of this year.” And in the next breath, a new goal: “I want it done by the fall,” he said.
What prompted the change? Well, when fellow Democrat and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said today there would not be a vote on the health care bill until September, Obama didn’t have much room to wiggle.
“So as long as I see folks working diligently and consistently, then I am comfortable with moving a process forward that builds as much consensus as possible,” he said.
During the town hall Obama took eight questions from an audience of about 1,600 people. One question was from a 14-year-old who asked how the president could reassure Americans that his health care proposal isn’t “too much too fast?” Obama’s response? Diligent and responsible work on health care = good. Delaying for the sake of delaying = bad.
But building consensus is murky business. Blue Dog Democrats have been giving the president some grief, reluctant to sign on to a health care bill they say drive the country further into the red.
Obama today acknowledged that this is complicated stuff and deserves authentic deliberation.
But he was then quick to draw parallels with other historic and monumental achievements in American history, like the Apollo 11 landing on the moon 40 years ago this week.
“If we’re going to move this country forward, we can’t be afraid to change, especially a system that we know is broken,” said Obama. “We’ve got to get it done and we’ve got to get it done soon.”
But after today, it appears that “soon” means anytime between now and 2010.
Obama: 'Now Is the Time For Common Sense Action' 
Romney Takes Aim at Conservatives
He should continue to put pressure on Congress to get this done.
Posted by: Ryan C | July 23, 2009, 6:22 pm 6:22 pm
I have to say that folks have a lot of nerve who were — helped us get into this fiscal hole and then start going around trying to talk about fiscal responsibility,” Obama said. “I’m always a little surprised that… that people don’t have a little more shame about having created a mess and then try to point fingers.”
================
Funny coming from a man who sat in the Senate for 4 years before becoming President.
Posted by: MayBee | July 23, 2009, 6:41 pm 6:41 pm
Obama has lost his ability to tell a decent lie.
Posted by: larry | July 23, 2009, 6:58 pm 6:58 pm
Mr. Obama said we have to have this health care package by end of August because of this, this and that. “It’s for you, not for me”, “It’s from the letters…”. He’s a liar.
Posted by: young_voter | July 23, 2009, 7:01 pm 7:01 pm
To Jacksmith:
Yes we need health care improvement, but this plan is not it. They want to turn over the medicate fund (money) to an “independent board” that is unaccountable to the people. Anybody with a brain can see that they are going to take that money.
Posted by: bubbles | July 23, 2009, 7:01 pm 7:01 pm
Waterloo!!
Posted by: robertb | July 23, 2009, 7:04 pm 7:04 pm
Capitalism and freedom live to fight another day!
Whoo hoo! The DOW celebrates Obama’s press conference disaster.
Posted by: Skittles | July 23, 2009, 7:08 pm 7:08 pm
“But he was then quick to draw parallels with other historic and monumental achievements in American history, like the Apollo 11 landing on the moon 40 years ago this week.”
===========================
The space program spurred countless innovations and improved the quality of life for Americans and beyond.
ObamaCare will spur the exact opposite.
Posted by: tjp612 | July 23, 2009, 7:11 pm 7:11 pm
Do we need reforms?, well yeah
If you take the government out of government health care (No “public option” dominating and driving out competition)
If you indeed facilitate real “clearinghouse” instead of the obsessive control mechanisms on “providers”
If you subsidize CITIZEN poor, instead of creating a extended benefit of FULL health care to illegals.
If your aim is to make sure everyone has access to competitive plans BEFORE “encouraging” the recalcitrant young, healthy or wealthy who resist
If your funding is FAIR – either tax all plans or none of them.
But Obama had his chance last night to offer the American people these fair choices BUT he is holding out for the SOCIALIZED plan. End of story.
Posted by: robertb | July 23, 2009, 7:13 pm 7:13 pm
“37th in quality??? Where’d that come from?”
That is the ranking done by the WHO.
Posted by: Ryan C | July 23, 2009, 7:24 pm 7:24 pm
Re: “If you subsidize CITIZEN poor, instead of creating a extended benefit of FULL health care to illegals.”
Quit lying about illegal immigrants. Don’t worry, they won’t get any health care. They will keep planting, picking and processing your food, creating billions in wealth for agribusiness, without even receiving basic health care. 500 years of exploitation will not change. Don’t worry.
Posted by: Karen | July 23, 2009, 7:24 pm 7:24 pm
tjp612:”The space program spurred countless innovations and improved the quality of life for Americans and beyond.
ObamaCare will spur the exact opposite.”
In every single other first world nation, a public option of some sort results in equivalent care (equal or longer life expectancies, first world levels of public health) at half the cost per person. Yet the right wing so demonizes our government, they continue to insist it would be uniquely catastrophic and just not work in America. Why can’t America do at least as well as France, or Britain, or Spain, or Sweden?
Posted by: jhw539 | July 23, 2009, 7:47 pm 7:47 pm
No big deal. This just gives the president and the Dems more time to sell reform to the public.
Posted by: matt | July 23, 2009, 7:47 pm 7:47 pm
Skittles:”The DOW celebrates Obama’s press conference disaster.”
Wait, I thought the Right was harping about how the DOW was a tracking poll on Obama’s success. I guess now that it’s sky rocketing it’s time to put that bumpersticker in the memory hole, eh?
Posted by: jhw539 | July 23, 2009, 7:48 pm 7:48 pm
to Ryan C. You have internet access. You need to do some research on how “equal” health care in France, Britain, Canada are before making such ignorant statements. The elderly and many with chronic or advanced conditions will be left out in the cold. Doesn’t the fact the president and the congress are exempted and don’t choose to participate in the “public option” tell you anything? Start researching and stop following blindly.!
Posted by: D Mitchell | July 23, 2009, 8:04 pm 8:04 pm
D Mitchell:”You need to do some research on how “equal” health care in France, Britain, Canada are before making such ignorant statements.”
What nonsense! Studies clearly show that healthcare in France, Britain and Canada is on par with the US. Perhaps you should try meeting some people from other countries. My four aunts, handful of cousins, and grandparent up to their death in old age are quite satisfied with healthcare in Britian, and they run the gamut from wealthy to working class. Canadian friends from college who returned to Canada who range from healthy to extensive treatment for a brain tumor are likewise quite happy with Canadian health care.
Would you like to more specifically cite a credibly study suggesting nationalized healthcare, which is offered in every other first world nation in existence, is a disaster?
Posted by: jhw539 | July 23, 2009, 8:12 pm 8:12 pm
Waterloo? – Meet Obama. :D
Posted by: ceeLeelee | July 23, 2009, 8:36 pm 8:36 pm
Peter Singer in the NYTs:
Last year Britain’s National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence gave a preliminary recommendation that the National Health Service should not offer Sutent for advanced kidney cancer. The institute, generally known as NICE, is a government-financed but independently run organization set up to provide national guidance on promoting good health and treating illness. The decision on Sutent did not, at first glance, appear difficult. NICE had set a general limit of £30,000, or about $49,000, on the cost of extending life for a year. Sutent, when used for advanced kidney cancer, cost more than that, and research suggested it offered only about six months extra life.
========================
The author is writing to support rationing.
When it is done now, people get upset with insurance companies. It is actually used as a rallying cry *for* a public option (back to the Nataline Sarkasyian case).
But this is what Jake tried to ask Obama last night, to no avail.
It is the kind of question that must be answered honestly and explicitly before any bill can be passed. What will Americans have to sacrifice?
In the above situation, would a patient on the public plan be denied Sutent when a patient on a public plan may get Sutent? If it is only available through supplemental or private insurance, does that mean only wealth people would get it? Or would drugs like Sutent go away entirely, along with the incentive to develop them?
There are important discussions to be had here. Obama didn’t want that discussion last night.
Posted by: MayBee | July 23, 2009, 8:39 pm 8:39 pm
And what exactly is he going to do if Congress doesn’t pass a healthcare bill? He can’t fire them.
Posted by: ellsbells930 | July 23, 2009, 8:47 pm 8:47 pm
matt – Obama and the Democrats will never sell this crap to me. This is NOT reform. True reform would do the following:
1) Dismantle Medicare – the creation of this bureaucratic, bloated, ineffective program was the beginning of our healthcare problems- until it can be transitioned out, give seniors $ to upgrade their supplemental insurance.
2) Allow insurance companies to sell products across state lines (and across county lines within states)
3) Give incentives to pharmaceutical companies to charge other countries the same as what they charge us – why should we fund the research for the rest of the world?
4) Encourage the legal system to throw out frivolous lawsuits and juries to award appropriate amounts instead of the millions they do now (I would say ‘tort reform’, but that is still too much government intervention)
5) Allow small businesses to form healthcare consortiums (with 501(c)3 status) to purchase insurance at reduced rates.
Posted by: ellsbells930 | July 23, 2009, 8:49 pm 8:49 pm
I think all of us should pay 500 to 1000 dollar more tax a year to cover a good universal health care program, that would cover everything for everyone, improve on the Canadian or France health plan, just make it better. A good health care plan would fix the economy. This is very simple, people now paying 20 or
30 000 thousand dollars a year to insurance companies, and if you get sick you could still loose everything, as the insurance company will do everything to get out of paying.
And if I could pay a one thousand extra tax, and have a good health care coverage, instead of tventyfive thousand a year, I would have an extra thentyfour thousand a year to spend and improve the economy. We dont need insurance company if the govornment have a good universal health care plan and cover everyone. The Canadian plan is not perfect, but people get good care and they dont loose they’r house,and the doctor, not the government decide what treatment is needed.
Posted by: Ivan | July 23, 2009, 8:51 pm 8:51 pm
And what exactly is he going to do if Congress doesn’t pass a healthcare bill? He can’t fire them.
===========
I think they are currently paying a high price for the extravagent stimulus bill. Maybe after that starts showing results, but before remind people we have to pay for it, there will be a window for health care to pass.
Posted by: MayBee | July 23, 2009, 8:54 pm 8:54 pm
Hey Mitchell. I’ve lived in several countries with socialized medicine, and I never had to wait to see my doctor or get treated. You can troll the net for the facts you want to find, but some of us get our research first hand. And, I’ll tell you what, I’d trade our system for any of the nationalized plans I’ve been on in a second. The thing conservatives don’t want to hear, but is true in each of these countries, is that there is still a private insurance industry operating alongside the nationalized system and if you have the money you can take out an additional policy, but if you don’t have a ton of wealth to throw around on additional coverage, at least you have something.
Posted by: looking beyond your backyard | July 23, 2009, 9:12 pm 9:12 pm
looking beyond your backyard | Jul 23, 2009 9:12:43 PM
And just for the record: none of these countries that you refer to are descending into communism are they?
Posted by: Skip | July 23, 2009, 9:20 pm 9:20 pm
but if you don’t have a ton of wealth to throw around on additional coverage, at least you have something.
======
There are people who get very upset at the idea of a two-tiered system here.
You see people asking Congress and Obama if they would be in the public plan, or if they would abide by the care limits set up by the board overseeing the public plan.
Posted by: MayBee | July 23, 2009, 9:39 pm 9:39 pm
When Obama, congress and the unions go on it then we can talk.
Posted by: notanobamafan | July 23, 2009, 9:45 pm 9:45 pm
Posted by: looking beyond your backyard | Jul 23, 2009 9:12:43 PM
___________________________________
You don’t mind if I don’t take the word of an anonymous commenter on an Internet blog, do you?
Posted by: Traffic Cop Timmy | July 23, 2009, 10:51 pm 10:51 pm
Skittles:”The DOW celebrates Obama’s press conference disaster.”
Wait, I thought the Right was harping about how the DOW was a tracking poll on Obama’s success. I guess now that it’s sky rocketing it’s time to put that bumpersticker in the memory hole, eh?
Posted by: jhw539 | Jul 23, 2009 7:48:20 PM
_________________________________
Investors will find a way to make money even in bad times. Meanwhile, regular Joe’s like myself have to sit on the sidelines waiting to see what Obama is ruin next.
By the way, at today’s rate of spending, federal spending JUST FOR 2009 will be at just under 4 trillion and the budget deficit just under 2 trillion dollars. Think that’s good for anybody?
And that’s just the federal budget. California is broke. Arizona is broke. Who knows who else is broke. But everyone in the media is leaping for joy because house prices have finally fallen far enough that there’s a little jiggle in home sales for 3 months running. Woo Woo! We’re on our way back!
Posted by: Traffic Cop Timmy | July 23, 2009, 11:06 pm 11:06 pm
Did Obama made the statement about being OK with missing his deadline while he was in WATERLOO Iowa? lol It had BETTER be OK with him, he has no choice in the matter. The people are starting to wake up and they don’t like what they see.
Posted by: Sunnyr | July 24, 2009, 7:57 pm 7:57 pm
We really need to stop using the word “rationing”. It’s not rationing, it’s denial of health care to a patient who needs it. Rationing sounds so benign, when what we’re really talking about is refusing to give necessary care to somebody. If people really understood that, support for this horrendous Democratic health care boondoggle would be even worse than it is now.
Posted by: EyeDoc | July 24, 2009, 9:31 pm 9:31 pm