In a speech in Newport News, Virginia on Saturday, the American Dream Candidate, Senator Barack Obama, explained why reforming the health care system is such a high priority for him.
With just a month to go until election day, I know you’ve all been hearing a lot about politics out here in Virginia. I know you’ve been seeing a lot of ads, and getting a lot of calls, and reading a lot about this election in the newspaper. But being here today to talk with you about health care - this isn’t about politics for me. This is personal.
I’m thinking today about my mother. She died of ovarian cancer at the age of 53. She fought valiantly, and endured the pain and chemotherapy with grace and good humor. But I’ll never forget how she spent the final months of her life. At a time when she should have been focused on getting well, at a time when she should have been taking stock of her life and taking comfort in her family, she was lying in a hospital bed, fighting with her insurance company because they didn’t want to cover her treatment. They claimed that her cancer was a pre-existing condition.
So I know something about the heartbreak caused by our health care system.
I know something about the anxiety of families hanging on by a thread as premiums have doubled these past eight years, and they’re going into debt, and more than half - half - of all personal bankruptcies are caused in part by medical bills.
I know about the frustration of the nearly 40 percent of small business owners who can no longer afford to insure their employees - folks who work day and night, but have to lay people off, or shut their doors for good, because of rising health care costs.
I know the outrage we all feel about the 45 million Americans who don’t have health insurance - kids who can’t see a doctor when they’re sick; parents cutting their pills in half and praying for the best; folks who wind up in the emergency room in the middle of the night because they’ve got nowhere else to turn.
But I also know that this is not who we are…
Let me be clear - I don’t think government can solve all our problems. But I reject the radical idea that government has no role to play in protecting ordinary Americans. I reject the thinking that says preserving our free market means letting corporations and special interests do as they please.
I know that nothing is more important than the health and well-being of the people you love. And if you work hard and do everything right, you shouldn’t live in fear of losing everything because of a fluke of genetics, or a bad diagnosis, or a stroke of bad luck.
That’s why I believe that every single American has the right to affordable, accessible health care - a right that should never be subject to Washington politics or industry profiteering, and that should never be purchased with tax increases on middle class families, because that is the last thing we need in an economy like this…
[Y]ou have my word that I will never back down, I will never give up, I will never stop fighting until we have fixed our health care system and no family ever has to go through what you’re going through, and my mother went through, and so many people go through every day in this country. That is my promise to you.
(Emphasis mine)
Ezra Klein calls the speech “powerful”. Watch it yourself and I think you’ll agree.
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Comments (1)
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When Obama was running for the Senate he was FOR single-payer health care. He said he supported the Bernadin Amendment in Illinois. Since he decided to run for president he's backed off. I think he'd give states the right to establish their own systems, and hopefully it would spread across the nation the way Canada did. In California we have a single-payer bill, SB 840, sitting on the governor's desk--again. We'd already have it had there not been a recall election five years ago. I'm not optimistic about any system which includes the insurance industry. It should be booted out like a long Adam Vinatieri field goal.
Posted by Steve Varalyay on October 9, 2008 at 12:59 PM
Posted on October 9, 2008 at 12:59 PM