President Barack Obama signed the sweeping health care reform legislation into law at the White House today, and now faces the task of selling the legislation to the American public.
Before a cheering crowd, the president said he was signing the bill in the memory of his late mother, who he said “argued with insurance companies, even as she was dying of cancer in her final days.”
The $938 billion bill will insure approximately 32 million more Americans over the next 10 years and requires nearly all Americans to have insurance or face penalties.
It also bans companies from denying coverage based on pre-existing conditions or dropping coverage when someone gets sick and extends parents’ health care coverage to children through the age of 26.
The president noted it wasn’t an easy feat to pass the measure, and hailed the members of Congress who pushed ahead amid the heated debate.
“We are a nation that faces its challenges and accepts its responsibilities. We are a nation that does what is hard, what is necessary, what is right,” said Obama. “Here in this country, we shape our own destiny. That is what we do, that is what we are, that is what makes us the United States of America.”
“Mr. President, you’re the guy that made it happen,” said Vice President Joe Biden, who praised Obama’s leadership skills before an audience that included the widow and close family members of the late Senator Edward Kennedy, a health care champion. “You have turned the right for every American to have access to affordable health care into a political reality for the first time in American history.”
The Congressional Budget Office estimated the bill will reduce the federal deficit by $138 billion over 10 years.
The U.S. Senate is also considering a package of changes already approved by the House of Representatives.
Senate Republicans are vowing to block efforts to pass the reconciliation measure. If they succeed in making any changes to the bill, it would have to go back to the House.
Shortly after Obama finished signing the bill, one Democratic and 12 Republican state attorneys filed a lawsuit against the bill, saying it is unconstitutional.
(READ MORE: http://www.ny1.com/)
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19 Responses
Obama great going – you don’t pay for insurance
The Republican hysteria over the health bill reminds me of frei Jews who a oppose an erev crying that it would mean an Orthodox takeover of a neighborhood and the end to their way of life. Factually rubbish
This is from a conservative source, quoted in http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/23/us/politics/23repubs.html?scp=2&sq=Republicans&st=cse – note the last line – All the allegations about socialism and government takeover is inaccurate hysteria – and the American Enter[prise Institute, a Bush friendly conservative organization, just about admits as much. Read on.
“David Frum, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, the conservative research organization, said Republicans had tried to defeat the bill to undermine Mr. Obama politically, but in the process had given up a chance of influencing a huge bill. Mr. Frum said his party’s stance sowed doubts with the public about its ideas and leadership credentials, and ultimately failed in a way that expanded Mr. Obama’s power.
“The political imperative crowded out the policy imperative,” Mr. Frum said. “And the Republicans have now lost both.”
“Politically, I get the ‘let’s trip up the other side, make them fail’ strategy,” he said. “But what’s more important, to win extra seats or to shape the most important piece of social legislation since the 1960s? It was a go-for-all-the-marbles approach. Unless they produced an absolute failure for Mr. Obama, there wasn’t going to be any political benefit.
“Republicans also face the question of what happens if the health care bill does not create the cataclysm that they warned of during the many months of debate.”
Hey aaym – You Be Wrong – As a senior Federal employee the President has the same amounts deducted from his paycheck as do all Federal legislators.
The real point is . . . and I’ll say this real slow . . . HE HAS INSURANCE . . . 32 million of your fellow citizens can’t get medical insurance. The new law remedies that, and a host of other denials of benefits, such as prior existing conditions . . .it does so through PRIVATE INSURANCE COMPANIES (no government takeover) . . . and according to the Congressional Budget Office, will save billions by removing millions of uninsured from emergency room care paid for by taxpayers.
Of course, if you just hate Obama no facts will matter to you.
2 & 3,
You are quoting the heavy duty left leaning NY Slimes as the voice of reason on behalf of Republicans? I wouldn’t use any part of that rag to even line a bird cage or wrap fish in it and I don’t have a bird & I can’t stand fish!
Chazal ask who is a chochem? One who is ro’eh es ha’noled. You don’t qualify because you are so blind to Obama, it blocks you from thinking logicaly.
I have so much to say but I will start with if this is so good for us, why not start all the so called benefits NOW!!!! Why wait till shortly before the election for some of the ‘good’ to show. Why wait till 2014 & 2019 for these wonderful things??? NOW!!!
If its so good, why would Congress & their staffers be exempt????
This law stinks. It will cause our premiums to rise just like they already started to rise. They will have to come up with a way to pay for this mess & we will have to pay a VAT tax on EVERYTHING! I don’t have money lying around to pay an additional 20 percent on EVERYTHING.
This health care mess plus high taxes are in place in Europe etc., and we have idiots here who are blinded by Obama & his teleprompter for The Great Lie.
Yonason since you seem to be a wealth of information….. HMMM we will save billions by taking the uninsured out of emergency rooms….SO who is paying for all of them to be insured? The government? WELL where does the government get money from? From HARDWORKING american TAX payers…. People that work hard and pay for their own insurance and dont wait for handouts…. and they are going to suffer tax increases so that the government could give handout to the uninsured!
Yonason, a voice of reason for Mr. Obama. He doesn’t pay what we pay for insurance for starters.
Second if you actually look at the numbers of the 32,000 that are uninsured — either they have CHOSEN to be uninsured for their own reasons OR they can’t afford it, because they don’t WANT to work of they really can’t afford it. For those that really can’t afford it, we can create a model like NY child health plus/family health plus. However, if you can’t afford it, and CAN work, but don’t want to bec. the government will pay attitude then they don’t deserve it, especially on our backs.
But Yonoson if you are so concerned why don’t you start a fund for them, I however, give plenty of charity to people that deserve it.
Sadly the HC bill will do exactly what itis meant to do make premums unaffordable. By forcing Health Insurance agencies to charge the chronically ill the same as a healthy 20 year old the only recourse for them will be to raise everyone’s premiums.
The next thing will be Government takeover.
then without incentives ingenuity will dry up and the USA will no linger be developing the drugs and machines that save lives.
And that will really kill people.
rockyk – take up your tainas with the Congressional Budget Office. I am not an economics expert – they are . . . and it is the CBO that came out with the savings forcast.
And my dear mark levin – or lark mevin – the quote is from David Frum, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute . . . so your shooting the messenger is an irrelevant tantrum.
aaym (#6) – you say “either they have CHOSEN to be uninsured for their own reasons OR they can’t afford it, because they don’t WANT to work of they really can’t afford it.”
Your ideological intransigence is making you cold, and ignores a hard, harsh reality.
There are a number of dual working middle age couples in my community (I am 59) who cannot get insurance, either because their employers don’t provide it, they are self employed and cannot afford oprivate insurance, or they have have had major medical problems that knocks them out of the box (prior existing conditions). There are kollel couples who cannot get adequate pre-natal care because they cannot afford insurance – I know of two kollel couples who never got marriage licenses so that they can claim to be single and stay on their parents policies (this is illegal). I know of several women in my community who have had breast cancer, and in each case if they were to lose employer-based coverage due to lay off or the like, they could not get new insurance to cover cancer related tests or, worse, recurrance.
Your attitude reflects a cruel charicature – nothing else.
YonasonW, the cbo said that the number was preliminary and they knew they didnt exactly get the right info. they could only go by the pile of manure placed in front of them. Of course if your crooked friends in power would be honest (HA! An honest democrat?!!?) they would tell you that the reason it looked so good is because they were collecting money on the deal starting almost right away and not paying out for almost 5 years, thus getting a head start!
When Obama’s Oh My Gosh The Deficit Is So High We Need To Get It Lower Committee comes back to him with the truth of how it is not sustainable and they have to make more taxes including a Value Added Tax (VAT), what will you say then? Are you ready for EVERYTHING to go up in price overnight by 20 PERCENT??
You must be very nearsighted and you can only see to the tip of your nose. What you dont see is how this has not worked in any other country and all other countries do this on a much smaller level. You think employers wont try to save money on health costs by putting everyone on the govt program. Once that happens premiums go up and the govt starts bashing insurance companies again only to take them over altogether.
I looked up some of the articles on the American Enterprise Institute website and I could tell you they DO NOT represent Conservative views. Had you quoted from The Heritage Foundation, you would have had my ear. American Enterprise Institute may have some right leanings but thats not enough.
Just remember, the Constitution, a document Obama doesnt like, says nothing about FORCING people to buy anything.
Your examples in 9 are nice tearjerkers and I feel bad for these people but not everyone has insurance. In those cases we pay for things out of pocket. If they have existing conditions, there are ALWAYS policies for them but they would of course have to pay more. That’s why its called INSURANCE because it INSURES. Your kolel people are committing fraud and their Torah is WORTHLESS!
Health insurance is not a right, it is a privilege. Too bad you and your leftist friends have lost the meaning of PRIVILEGE.
Do I sound cruel, maybe but this is not all about me. This is about everyone. Almost 70% of the country told Congress we didnt want this bill but they told us to Drop Dead and they did it anyway. We will have our day barring any more shenanigans by Obama and we will vote them all out in November.
“Let me get this straight……we’re trying to pass a health care plan… written by a committee whose chairman says he doesn’t understand it,… passed by a Congress that hasn’t read it …but exempts themselves from it, … to be signed by a president that also hasn’t read it …and who smokes, …with funding administered by a treasury chief who didn’t pay his taxes,… all to be overseen by a surgeon general who is obese, …and financed by a country that’s broke. What could possibly go wrong?” – Anonymous
Yonason, do you pay for insurance??….this is rubbish. 65% of the country DOESNT want it. I hope Obama will be outvoted in 2012 (if Moshiach isnt here by then Ch”v)
YonasanW if you do not know what you are talking about, then how can you go around making such claims and vilifying anyone who disagrees with you?
Obviously is not mark levin – or lark mevin, who is having the tantrums or ranting.
And your “quote” means nothing, it is just
another rant from a liberal Republican, so he said that, so what?
It is just his opinion, not fact.
He ‘proved’ nothing.
And in England with their ‘wonderful’ health care women there cannot get breast cancer screening because it’s ‘not in the budget’.
This health scam will also force people to suffer from lack of treatment because it is not in the budget.
Just like Obama said about a woman who needes hip replacement surgery, “she should just take the pain pill”.
There is your liberal “compassion”.
Perhaps some of those Kollel people wered not meant to stay in Kollel if they cannot afford it.
I had to leave yeshivah with a total lifetime learning in yeshivah being only 2 years because I could not afford it, no one came around and paid MY way to make sure I could keep learning which I desparately wanted to do.
So now you are supporting a scam which will force me to pay money I do not have for health insurance I cannot afford and it will be taken from my taxes by IRS which will leave me with too little money to pay rent which in turn will force me out onto the street.
Thanks but no thanks for your overwhelming “compassion’.
hereorthere,
The United Kingdom does not aggressively screen for breast cancer because multiple randomized studies — the gold standard for medical research — have shown that such screening does not save lives. I have personally given several presentations on this matter (I’m a biostatistics professor) and I am giving another in May.
justsmile613,
Gallup reported today 49% approval of the health care bill, 40% disapproval. Not 65% disapproval.
mark levin,
Health insurance is neither a right (Judaism isn’t much for “rights”) nor a privilege. It is an obligation on the community. So said Rabbi Dr. Moshe Tendler a few years ago and no rabbi of any prominence has disproved him on this point.
Charliehall
Why oh Why do you continue to state Dr Tendlers stupidity and refuse to address the fact that that I have publicly debunked every point he said and you posted in the Coffee Room?
Charlie Hall the randomized tests do not prove it does not save any lives rather it proves that they save fewer lives then one would think and are thereby not cost efficient.
However in he torah view of “one who save a single life it is if he saved an entire world” as long as screening save that single life it is considered “cost efficient”.
This bill is making America do be a country based on Torah laws. It’s a good thing. Just remember that! This is what Hashem wants!
Wait a minute……… Is Tendler just a doctor?
I had thought he was a rav or other gadol.
If he is not then, I would not be doing any averias if he were wrong, and I said so.
Also England years ago (I believe I heard on Sean Hannity’s show)had a lottery where the winner got to get a denitsts appointment.
And my quote in my last post about the pain pill shows that even Obama is admitting people will be denied necessary care.
That is because it is not about people being cared for.
It is a scam which will allow the government to take over every aspect of our lives, Stalin style.
#17
With all due respect you have no idea what your talking about-on many accounts. Just for starters, if this bill was so good why did congress exempt themselves from it? It is a tremendous affront on our liberties and Chas veshalom on our abilities to make our own decisions.