Obama Addresses the Nation

To begin my coverage of Healthcare reform (Yay! first topic post) I feel I must cover the main event of this week, the President’s address to Congress.

On Wednesday September 9, 2009, President Barack Obama made a joint address to Congress about healthcare reform and strongly declared...

“…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.”

After months of speculation, rumors, and out of control Town Hall meetings, the President needed to address some concerns. Obama accomplished what he needed to accomplish in his speech this week by addressing several of the issues that have been causing chaos throughout American. He first addressed the fictitious rumors being circulated around, specifically those involving death panels (explained in previous voice blog), healthcare coverage of illegal immigrants (which I got a whole lot of calls about this at the Senators office), and federal funding of abortions. He makes it perfectly clear that they are all UNTRUE. Right after he dismisses these rumors a Republican Representatives from little ol’ South Carolina, Joe Wilson, had an outburst, shouting “You Lie” to the President. My first thought was who ever thought of a heckler in Congress!! Please save the heckling for Town Hall meetings. Just had to mention that…

Now back to the issues at hand, Obama also offers his own plan and firmly states his goals including: providing access to coverage regardless of pre-existing conditions, provide security and stability in cost to those who have insurance and extend it to those who don’t have insurance. He also reaffirmed his position on a Public Option as being an aspect of the bill, which was unclear during the past few weeks since there have been claims of the Democrats retracting from the option. But he’s main proposal is to provide every citizen with some kind of health insurance either from a private or public institution. All in all, the President sought to clarify a message that he was not trying to force American citizens to change their health insurance completely but to provide them with relief from the growing cost in this troubled economy. So as the Senators and Representatives return to Capitol Hill from their summer vacation, some hurt and bruised from the frantic Town Halls, the time has come to start forming legislation that is meant to benefit the American people not hurt them. Although there are many points in Obama’s Plan, available here, not covered in this post, I will address them in future post along with reactions to the Speech.

And so Obama ended with a few words from a letter written to him from the late Senator Ted Kenney saying

"What we face is above all a moral issue; at stake are not just the details of
policy, but fundamental principles of social justice and the character of our
country."

For full text click here.