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(President Obama delivered a clear push for public option and reform for the insurance industry in his speech to Congress, although critics called it little more than a political pep talk. Dr. Nancy Snyderman discusses reaction to the president’s speech with NBC’s Chuck Todd.)
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Pres. Obama: Time to take action on Health Care
(Polls show Americans trust their doctors more than President Barack Obama when it comes to health care reform, so what does the American Medical Association want to see in a reform plan and how do doctors feel about a public option? AMA’s Dr. Jeremy Lazarus discusses.)
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President Barack Obama said Thursday that it was time to wind down the health care debate and take action, reprising his demand that American politicians end their bickering about a health care overhaul.
A relaxed Pres. Obama spoke to an assemblage of Nurses just hours after telling U.S. lawmakers in a rare joint session of Congress that he would no longer "waste time" with those who put politics ahead of the needs of the American people.
The congressional speech Wednesday night was a sweeping defense of changing a system that he and others contend could bankrupt the world's largest economy. He told members of the House of Representatives and the Senate that a nasty political summer was over and "now is the season for action."
The President reprised that message to a gathering of the American Nurses Association, thanking them for supporting the health care overhaul and repeating his attack on partisan distractions.
"We have talked this issue to death," Pres. Obama told his audience of nurses in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. "The time for talk is winding down."
He noted the release of new figures from the US Census Bureau that showed the number of people lacking health insurance rose to 46.3 million in 2008, up from 45.7 million the year before.
Pres. Obama's decision to speak Wednesday night on Capitol Hill marked a rare appearance at a joint congressional session. It was all the more unusual for a breakdown in civility — catcalls from one member of the House of Representatives. While members of the opposition party often do not applaud a president of the other party, it is unheard of for them to engage in audible name-calling.
Republican congressman Joe Wilson of South Carolina shouted out "You lie" when the president said illegal immigrants would not benefit from his proposals. The president paused briefly and smiled, but from her seat in the visitor's gallery, First Lady Michelle Obama shook her head from side to side in disapproval of the interruption. Wilson later apologized for his "lack of civility."
Thursday morning, Vice President Joe Biden said the outburst made him "embarrassed for the chamber and a Congress I love."
"It demeaned the institution," said Biden, who spent decades as a senator before Obama chose him as a running mate.
In the Wednesday night speech, Obama was fighting not only for a signature domestic policy campaign promise but battling, too, to win back flagging public support for revamping a system that has left millions of Americans without health insurance, drives thousands into bankruptcy each day and consumes nearly 20 percent of the country's economy.
The United States is the only developed country without a universal program of health care coverage. While many Americans are dissatisfied with the health care system, attempts to change it are politically explosive.
Biden said he expected a health care bill to be done by the Thanksgiving holiday in late November because Obama has "re-centered debate" and there's bipartisan consensus for change despite the fight over a government-run option.
"I think the most important thing he did, he also debunked a lot of the myths out there, the idea of death panels, that we were going to insure undocumented aliens," said Biden. He spoke on morning network news shows.
Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona, also interviewed Thursday morning, said he agreed that something needs to be done about health care. But he also said that if the administration wants to see legislation realized, it must reach out more aggressively to minority Republicans.
"We need to do it, but it has to be bipartisan," McCain said. "We can't lay another trillion dollars of debt on the next generation. ... It's generational theft."
Through a summer of angry debate, Obama also witness a sharp decline in his once-soaring popularity.
The speech was a political tour de force. To the public, he offered assurances that his plan would provide more security and more health care choices, while offering coverage to people who cannot now afford it.
To Republicans, he offered a hand to work together and pledged not to raise the government's deficit. For Democrats, who want him to be more assertive, he lashed out at opponents, accusing them of employing scare tactics and lies to bring down the plan — and his presidency.
"I will not waste time with those who have made the calculation that it's better politics to kill this plan than improve it," he said.
Obama appealed to emotions, unveiling a letter from Edward Kennedy, the respected Democratic senator who died last month. In the letter, delivered posthumously, Kennedy expressed confidence that the overhaul would pass this year. Kennedy's widow, Vicki, was in the chamber's visitor's gallery next to first lady Michelle Obama.
And Obama returned to the soaring political rhetoric that marked his presidential campaign.
"We did not come to fear the future. We came here to shape it," he told lawmakers.
Obama's plan would impose new regulations on insurers while requiring all Americans to get coverage. He says it would drive down prices, prevent insurers from dropping sick patients and ultimately strengthen the economy by curbing exorbitant health care costs.
He said the changes he wants would cost about $900 billion over a decade, "less than we have spent on the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and less than the tax cuts for the wealthiest few Americans" passed during the Bush administration.
Republicans have overwhelmingly opposed the plan. They see it as a step toward a government takeover of health care and fear it will raise costs while driving down quality.
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Sources: MSNBC, American Nursing Association, US Census Bureau, Google Maps
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