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Weekly Address: President Obama – Expanding Access to Affordable Healthcare

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From the White House – Weekly Address

In this week’s address, President Obama says that on October 1st, a big part of the Affordable Care Act will go live and give uninsured Americans the chance to buy the same quality, affordable health care as everyone else. It is also the day when some Republicans in Congress might shut down the government just because they don’t like the law. The President urged Congress to both pass a budget by Monday and raise the nation’s debt ceiling so that we can keep growing the economy. He also said that those without health insurance and those who buy it on the individual market should visit HealthCare.gov to find out how to get covered on Tuesday.

Transcript: Averting a Government Shutdown and Expanding Access to Affordable Healthcare

Hi, everybody.  This Tuesday is an important day for families, businesses, and our economy.

It’s the day a big part of the Affordable Care Act kicks in, and tens of millions of Americans will finally have the same chance to buy quality, affordable health care as everyone else.

It’s also the day that a group of far-right Republicans in Congress might choose to shut down the government and potentially damage the economy just because they don’t like this law.

I’ll get to that in a second.  But first – here’s what the Affordable Care Act means for you.



If you’re one of the vast majority of Americans who already have health care, you already have new benefits you didn’t before, like free mammograms and contraceptive care with no copay, and discounts on prescription medicine for seniors.  You’ve already got new protections in place too, like no more lifetime limits on your care, no more discriminating against children with preexisting conditions like asthma, or being able to stay on your parents’ plan until you turn 26.

That’s all in place and available to Americans with health insurance right now.

If you don’t have health insurance, or if you buy it on the individual market, then starting this Tuesday, October 1st, you can visit HealthCare.gov to find what’s called the health insurance marketplace in your state.

This is a website where you can compare insurance plans, side-by-side, the same way you’d shop for a TV or a plane ticket.  You’ll see new choices and new competition.  Many of you will see cheaper prices, and many of you will be eligible for tax credits that bring down your costs even more.  Nearly 6 in 10 uninsured Americans will be able to get coverage for $100 or less.

If you’re one of the up to half of Americans with a preexisting condition, these new plans mean your insurer can no longer charge you more than anyone else.  They can’t charge women more than men for the same coverage.  And they take effect January 1st.

So get covered at HealthCare.gov.  And spread the word.  These marketplaces will be open for business on Tuesday, no matter what.  The Affordable Care Act is one of the most important things we’ve done as a country in decades to strengthen economic security for the middle class and all who strive to join the middle class.  And it is going to work.

That’s also one of the reasons it’s so disturbing that Republicans in Congress are threatening to shut down the government – or worse – if I don’t agree to gut this law.

Congress has two responsibilities right now: pass a budget on time, and pay our bills on time.

If Congress doesn’t pass a budget by Monday – the end of the fiscal year – the government shuts down, along with many vital services the American people depend on.  On Friday, the Senate passed a bill to keep the government open.  But Republicans in the House have been more concerned with appeasing an extreme faction of their party than working to pass a budget that creates new jobs or strengthens the middle class.  And in the next couple days, these Republicans will have to decide whether to join the Senate and keep the government open, or create a crisis that will hurt people for the sole purpose of advancing their ideological agenda.

Past government shutdowns have disrupted the economy.  This shutdown would, too.  At a moment when our economy has steadily gained traction, and our deficits have been falling faster than at any time in 60 years, a shutdown would be a purely self-inflicted wound.  And that’s why many Republican Senators and Republican governors have urged Republicans in the House of Representatives to knock it off, pass a budget, and move on.

This brings me to the second responsibility Congress has.  Once they vote to keep the government open, they must also vote within the next couple weeks to allow the Treasury to pay the bills for the money that Congress has already spent.  Failure to meet this responsibility would be far more dangerous than a government shutdown – it would be an economic shutdown, with impacts not just here, but around the world.

Unfortunately some Republicans have suggested that unless I agree to an even longer list of demands – not just gutting the health care law, but things like cutting taxes for millionaires or rolling back rules on big banks and polluters- they’ll push the button, throwing America into default for the first time in history and risk throwing us back into recession.

I will work with anyone who wants to have a serious conservation about our economic future.  But I will not negotiate over Congress’ responsibility to pay the bills it has already racked up.  I don’t know how to be more clear about this: no one gets to threaten the full faith and credit of the United States of America just to extract ideological concessions.  No one gets to hurt our economy and millions of innocent people just because there are a couple laws you don’t like.  It hasn’t been done in the past, and we’re not going to start doing it now.

The American people have worked too hard to recover from crisis to see extremists in their Congress cause another one. And every day this goes on is another day that we can’t continue the work of rebuilding the great American middle class.  Congress needs to pass a budget in time, pay its bills on time, and refocus on the everyday concerns of the people who sent them there.

That’s what I’m focused on.  That’s what I’ll keep fighting for.

Thank you.

Bolding added.

~

From WhiteHouse.gov – a White Board presentation:

Share this!!

The White House has a web page chock full of useful information at WhiteHouse.gov/HealthReform.  Here is what you will find there:

– At A Glance: The ACA in charts and graphs. Share these with your friends and family.

– About the New Law: Everything you want to know about the law itself

– Relief for You: What it means to you

– Myths & Facts: What? People are trying to scare you and lie to you? :::insert shock emoticon here:::

– Health Care News: A section that includes a blog with the latest news and information

– Marketplace Premiums: A state-by-state interactive look at the anticipated premiums in all 50 states.

~

Editor’s Note: The President’s Weekly Address diary is also the weekend open news thread. Feel free to leave links to other news items in the comment threads.


Categories: Uncategorized.

/ 15 Comments

15 comments

  1. JanF

    From the president:

    On Friday, the Senate passed a bill to keep the government open.  But Republicans in the House have been more concerned with appeasing an extreme faction of their party than working to pass a budget that creates new jobs or strengthens the middle class.  And in the next couple days, these Republicans will have to decide whether to join the Senate and keep the government open, or create a crisis that will hurt people for the sole purpose of advancing their ideological agenda.

    The economy is sputtering right now; growth has slowed. The last thing we need is to furlough people and stop the flow of government money into the economy.  

  3. JanF

    GOP Descends Into Civil War Over Obamacare As Shutdown Looms

    The Senate voted 54-44 on Wednesday to keep the government funded with Obamacare intact, sending the stopgap measure back to House Republicans, who are in the midst of a civil war as the clock ticks to a shutdown Monday night.

    Reid Tells Republicans: ‘Get A Life’

    “They need to accept what we just passed,” Reid told reporters after the Senate stripped defund Obamacare language from the spending bill and then approved the bill in final passage.

    “Obamacare has been the law for four years,” Reid added. “Why don’t they get a life and talk about something else?”

    The Party of Grandstander Ted Cruz “criticizes Obama’s ‘Grandstanding'”

    “The House will take action that reflects the fundamental fact that Americans don’t want a government shutdown and they don’t want the train wreck that is Obamacare,” Boehner spokesman Brendan Buck said in a statement. “Grandstanding from the president, who refuses to even be a part of the process, won’t bring Congress any closer to a resolution.”

    psst!! Boehner spokesman!! It it not called “grandstanding” … it is called the “bully pulpit”. A Republican president coined the term.

  4. JanF

    Or experts!!! What the heck do they know??? Congressman: Don’t Listen To Economists On Debt Ceiling

    When it comes to paying the nation’s debts on time, Rep. John Fleming (R-FL) prefers to trust his gut rather than heed the unanimous warnings of professional economists. “Economists, what have they been doing?” the three-term congressman said in the New York Times on Friday. “They make all sorts of predictions.”

    “Economic uncertainty” is only bad when it relates to “job creators” worrying about tax rates and government regulations, apparently (that is so 2010). It can’t possibly be bad when it relates to the global market melting down after a default by the world’s largest economy being unable to pay its bills. That scenario is “making stuff up”.

  5. JanF

    Paul Krugman’s column yesterday mocked the .01% (Robert Benmosche of AIG, specifically) for comparing themselves to those lynched in the deep south and, of course … no persecution is complete without a Hitler reference … Poland being invaded by Hitler!!

    You may find it incredible that anyone would, even for an instant, consider this comparison appropriate. But there have actually been a series of stories like this. In 2010, for example, there was a comparable outburst from Stephen Schwarzman, the chairman of the Blackstone Group, one of the world’s largest private-equity firms. Speaking about proposals to close the carried-interest loophole – which allows executives at firms like Blackstone to pay only 15 percent taxes on much of their income – Mr. Schwarzman declared, “It’s a war; it’s like when Hitler invaded Poland in 1939.”

    And you know that such publicly reported statements don’t come out of nowhere. Stuff like this is surely what the Masters of the Universe say to each other all the time, to nods of agreement and approval. It’s just that sometimes they forget that they’re not supposed to say such things where the rabble might learn about it.

    ~snip~

    This is important. Sometimes the wealthy talk as if they were characters in “Atlas Shrugged,” demanding nothing more from society than that the moochers leave them alone. But these men were speaking for, not against, redistribution – redistribution from the 99 percent to people like them. This isn’t libertarianism; it’s a demand for special treatment. It’s not Ayn Rand; it’s ancien régime.

    Paul Krugman: Plutocrats Feeling Persecuted

    I was led to my Wikies by this great rant!!

    Ancien régime


    The Ancien Régime was the monarchic, aristocratic, social and political system established in the Kingdom of France from approximately the 15th century until the later 18th century (“early modern France”) under the late Valois and Bourbon dynasties.[…]

    In 1789, the Ancien Régime was violently overthrown by the French Revolution. Although France in 1785 faced economic difficulties, mostly concerning the equitability of taxation, it was one of the richest and most powerful nations of Europe. The French people also enjoyed more political freedom and a lower incidence of arbitrary punishment than many of their fellow Europeans. However, Louis XVI, his ministers, and the widespread French nobility had become immensely unpopular. This was a consequence of the fact that peasants and, to a lesser extent, the bourgeoisie, were burdened with ruinously high taxes levied to support wealthy aristocrats and their sumptuous lifestyles.

    The redistribution of wealth from the working class and middle class to the 1% led to the French Revolution. You can’t have a great country without a great middle class … and the peasants can’t eat cake when they don’t have bread.

    The GOP’s “haves and have mores” are sucking the wealth of our country into their gaping maws and leaving nothing left to be invested in our future economic growth. People who make money buying and selling pieces of paper to each other simply do not get it.

  6. JanF

    One of the excuses used by red-state governors who refused the Medicaid expansion money offered with the Affordable Care Act (the provision struck by the Supreme Court made it optional, not mandatory) is that it would give them money now but the funding would expire down the road.

    Arkansas Governor Mike Beebe (D) found a way to get the Medicaid money without expanding Medicaid, showing how if you work with the federal government to try to make life suck less for your state’s citizens, you can find reasonable compromises.

    Obamacare allocates generous federal funding to states that expand Medicaid to all Americans living up to 133 percent of the Federal Poverty Level (FPL). Although Beebe supports the expansion, he realized it would be difficult to convince lawmakers in a deeply red state where both legislative houses are controlled by Republicans to approve of such a plan. But faced with an adult uninsurance rate of 26 percent, Beebe decided to negotiate a compromise with Republican state lawmakers.

    The agreement that Beebe struck with the legislature – dubbed by some as the “private option” – will still provide health insurance to all Arkansas residents up to 133 percent FPL. But instead of placing these newly-eligible Americans in the public Medicaid program, Beebe’s alternative will send them to shop for private insurance through the state’s Obamacare marketplace. The federal money that would have been used to pay for the Medicaid expansion would instead be used to give low-income people government subsidies to buy private coverage.

    So the money is available to subsidize private insurance purchased on the same exchanges that other uninsured Arkansans will use but without expanding the Medicaid rolls. That means that when the federal grant expires, there is no commitment to continue. That pushes the day-of-reckoning down the road but perhaps into a better economy where many of those folks can find jobs and pay for their own insurance.

    It will be interesting to see how this works and if other governors can swallow their ideological pride for long enough to do something positive for those they refuse to cover. In Wisconsin, those who don’t qualify for Medicaid and who can’t buy any insurance will just go without any insurance and get their care in the emergency rooms.  

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