Yesterday President Barack Obama spoke for a few minutes on the late Saturday night passage of a healthcare reform bill in the House. Watch that video here, courtesy of MSNBC.
Follow this link to healthcareWA’s Facebook page to watch President Obama speak about healthcare reform in his weekly address.
Below is the transcript of the address.
On Wednesday, I addressed a joint session of Congress and the American people about why we need health insurance reform and what it will take to do it.
Since then, I’ve continued to hear from many Americans across the country about why this is so urgent and important.
State Senator Karen Keiser, chair of the Senate Health & Long-Term Care Committee, hosted a series of four healthcare town halls last month with Representative Eileen Cody. You can read about those here and here.
This afternoon Senator Keiser responded to last night’s healthcare address by President Barack Obama and the effects of healthcare reform on Washington State.
The health reform goals outlined in the President’s speech, ─slowing health care costs, covering the insured and providing families with more security and stability─ are goals we have worked for years to achieve at the state level. Those are Washington state values. It’s clear we have a strong federal partner to help us solve this critical issue.
The National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) supports the public health insurance option, while over 850 individual states legislators from all fifty states with the Progressive States Network have called for any federal reform bill to include a public health insurance option, strong affordability protections, and shared employer responsibility for health care costs.
More than 876,000 Washingtonians have no coverage and many others are underinsured. They are just one illness or accident away from financial ruin. We need reform now, not yelling and screaming. Going forward, we need to tone down the rhetoric and focus on the issue at hand ─fixing our broken health care system.
States will be responsible for implementing any plan Congress passes and the President signs, so we will have a lot of work to do during the 2010-2011 sessions.
We’ve been working on health reform for years in our state with good success. Having the backing and support of the federal government will help us reduce waste, fraud and abuse in the industry and provide our citizens with the coverage they need and deserve.
I was glad to see bogus claims such as death panels debunked. The President set a new tone with the speech. As chair of the Senate Health & Long-Term Care Committee, I hope that spirit of cooperation will be evident at upcoming health reform hearings in both chambers of the state legislature.
Below is the text of the letter from Senator Edward M. Kennedy referenced by the President in tonight’s address to a Joint Session of Congress.
May 12, 2009
Dear Mr. President,
I wanted to write a few final words to you to express my gratitude for your repeated personal kindnesses to me – and one last time, to salute your leadership in giving our country back its future and its truth.
On a personal level, you and Michelle reached out to Vicki, to our family and me in so many different ways. You helped to make these difficult months a happy time in my life.
You also made it a time of hope for me and for our country.
According to an Associated Press-GfK poll released today, President Barack Obama’s disapproval for his handling of healthcare policy reform is up to 52%.
“The survey of 1,001 adults with cell and landline telephones was conducted from Sept. 3-8. It had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.” – Yahoo! News
Read the story here and read the questions posed to respondents here.
This summer the Washington Policy Center held their 7th annual healthcare conference in Seatac. The luncheon speaker was Dr. Steven Eastaugh, one of President Barack Obama’s healthcare policy advisors.
In his speech, Dr. Eastaugh outlines key elements of President Obama’s healthcare policy reform goals.
Here is video of Senator Maria Cantwell and Govornor Chris Gregoire discussing healthcare reform options with local industry leadership. The discussion took place on Tuesday, June 30th at University of Washington School of Medicine before an overflow crowd. This was the first time Senator Cantwell came out in favor of a public option.
At a far smaller-scale town hall today, President Barack Obama said, “I think a public option is affordable.” He also spoke directly to those worried about the costs of healthcare reform, saying, “If you’re a deficit hawk, you should be especially concerned about healthcare reform, because Medicare is going to be bankrupt in eight years.”
