Pres. Obama Holds Town Hall Meeting in Green Bay to Push Healthcare Reform

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11 June 2009 :: staff

Pres. Obama today held a town-hall meeting in Green Bay, Wisconsin, to discuss healthcare reform. He spoke of the need to use the best options available to bring down costs across the board and generate honest competition in the insurance business. Strongly opposing the ills of a government managed system of “socialized medicine”, he assured the public that “If you like your doctor, you’ll be able to keep your doctor. If you like your healthcare plan, you’ll be able to keep your healthcare plan.”

Obama went on to say that healthcare costs were spinning out of control, mounting far more quickly than economic growth or wage growth and added that “The status quo is unsustainable. If we don’t act, and act soon, to bring down healthcare costs, it will affect everyone’s healthcare.” He said that economists project that in 30 years, if nothing is done, Americans will be spending one out of every three dollars on healthcare. ”Now, that’s untenable, it’s unacceptable”, he said, adding that as president he “will not allow it” to come to pass.

Obama sought to address critics who claim he is too ambitious or is taking on too many complicated issues at once, saying “I’m not doing this because I don’t have enough to do” and calling comprehensive healthcare reform “central” to the future prosperity and wellbeing of the nation. He cited Green Bay as an example of how communities with lower healthcare costs and effective electronic medical records and regular preventive care, can have better quality care. 

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The president said the central question must be: “How do we permanently bring down costs and make quality, affordable healthcare available to every American?” He added that the most straightforward approach considers that “Reform should be based on one simple principle: we will fix what’s broken and build on what works.”

Estimates of what comprehensive healthcare reform could mean, including the reduction in costs that would come from not having to provide free emergency treatment —across the system— to those without coverage, $546 billion to $800 billion in savings for American small businesses. Large employers are voicing concerns over what costs there might be in association with government mandates for employer-provided healthcare policies. 

But Obama said is focus is on flaws in the system that need to be corrected, to bring costs down across the board. The current system, for example, assumes more expensive care is automatically better care, and rewards inflation of profits, even where quality of care suffers. A system that removes that distortion, or the incentive to rely on that distortion to drive up costs, would save every sector of the economy money, with the possible exception of insurers whose profits might decline as they are forced to compete to provide better quality coverage.

The average family already spends an estimated $1,000 in extra premium costs to “subsidize” sporadic, incomplete emergency care for the 50 million Americans with no coverage. Obama reminded Americans that everyone who buys insurance at present is already paying that subsidy which is “hidden” in their insurance premiums. 

The president announced his support for a “public insurance option”, which would mean the option to buy into a government-backed non-profit insurance plan, designed to “compete” with the private sector. He said such a plan would help keep private sector providers honest, by forcing them to compete with a plan designed specifically to provide quality care at lower cost.

Pres. Obama declared his intention to “fix what’s broken about healthcare in America” now, “so that our healthcare providers and doctors are free to do what they trained and studied so hard to do, and that’s make people well again”. Constraints placed on medical personnel by insurance officers, preventing them from following science and providing the best-quality treatment to patients, have long been a complaint of medical practitioners and patients who pay for their coverage.

The first question from the public was from a self-employed woman who supports the “single-payer option” above every other plan. She said it would meet Pres. Obama’s three main criteria and be the most affordable option and urged the president, who favors a diversified public and private insurance market to a single-payer system, to make sure the option remains on the table for consideration during the shaping of reform legislation.

Pres. Obama sought to distinguish between “socialized medicine” and a “single-payer plan”. He explained that a system of socialized medicine means the government controls every aspect of the healthcare system: doctors work for the system, receive orders and placements, quotas and constraints, from the system. The single-payer option only means that a single source reimburses providers who give care; there is no medical or organizational advice coming from the government in that case. 

Obama went on to explain that he feels that real competition should include all options: if a private plan works best for a given individual, that individual should be able to have that option, but if a public plan, which is not organized around the profit motive, would be more affordable or provide better quality for another individual, then that individual should also have such an option. 

Part of the challenge Obama faces in pushing major comprehensive healthcare reform through Congress is the insistence by Republican opponents of such reform that they are fighting to prevent the establishment of a socialist system that would deny coverage. This is an entirely false assertion, and Obama made reference to the misconception in his remarks.

Another obstacle will be the significant differences between the House majority, which favors a more expansive, government-backed reform plan and the Senate moderates in both parties, who seek to keep costs from inflating the federal budget deficit. Obama has pledged to find ways to offset costs —a public insurance option would, at least in part, be directly funded by participants’ fees, for example—, and has consistently shown economic analysis that shows effective reform will make for more reliable long-term economic prosperity, as costs are reduced.