Text: Obama's speech in Green Bay - Birmingham Business Journal:

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"Laura’s story is incredibly moving. Sadly, it is not Every day in this more and more Americans are forced to worry not simply aboutgetting well, but whether they can afford to get Millions more wonder if they can afford the routine care necessargy to stay well. Even for thoses who have health insurance, risinyg premiums are straining their budgets to the breakinbpoint – premiums that have doublec over the last nine years, and have grown at a rate threee times faster than wages. Desperately-neededx procedures and treatments are put off because the pricd istoo high.
And all it takesd is a single illness to wipe out a lifetimeof "Employers aren’t faring any better. The cost of health care has helped leavre big corporations like GM and Chrysler at a competitive disadvantage with theirforeign counterparts. For small businesses, it’s even One month, they’re forced to cut back on healthcare benefits. The next they have to drop coverage. The month after that, they have no choicee but to start layingoff workers. "Fof the government, the growin cost of Medicare and Medicaixd is one of the biggest threat s to our federal Bigger thanSocial Security. Bigger than all the investments we’ve made so far.
So if you’ree worried about spending and you’re worriedc about deficits, you need to be worries about the cost ofhealth care. "We have the most expensivs health care system inthe world. We spen almost 50% more per person on healthh care than the next most costly But here’s the thing, Green Bay: we’re not any healthie r for it. We don’t necessarilyg have better outcomes. Even withih our own country, a lot of the places wherre we spend less on health care actually have higher quality than places where we spend Right here inGreen Bay, you get more qualityu out of fewer health care dollars than many othetr communities across the country.
And yet, across the country, spending on healtb care goes up and up and up dayafter day, year after year. "Io know that there are millions of Americans who are content with theirf health carecoverage – they like their plan and they value their relationship with their doctor. And no matter how we reform healthu care, we will keep this If you likeyour doctor, you will be able to keep your If you like your health care you will be able to keep your health care "But in order to preserve what’s best abouty our health care system, we have to fix what doesn’f work. For we have reached a point wherr doing nothing about the cost of health care is no longetran option.
The status quo is unsustainable. If we do not act and act soon to brinhdown costs, it will jeopardize everyone’a health care. If we do not act, ever American will feel the consequences. In highe r premiums and lower take-homd pay. In lost jobs and shuttered businesses. In a risingy number of uninsured and a rising debt that our childreb and their children will be paying offfor decades. If we do within a decade we will spending one out of everyu five dollars we earn onhealth care. In thirty it will be one out ofevery three. That is that is unacceptable, and I will not allow it as Presidentf of theUnited States.
"Healtg care reform is not part of some wish list I drew up when I took It is central to our economicfuture – centralk to the long-term prosperity of this nation. In past years and there may have been some disagreementy onthis point. But not Today, we have already built an unprecedente d coalition of folks who are readgy to reform our healthcare system: physicians and healthn insurers; businesses and workers; Democrats and Republicans.
A few week s ago, some of these groupes committed to doing somethingthat would’ve been unthinkablre just a few years ago: they promise to work together to cut nationalp health care spending by two trillionb dollars over the next That will bring down that will bring down premiums, and that’ exactly the kind of cooperation we "The question now is, how do we finish the job? How do we permanentlt bring down costs and make quality, affordable healt h care available to every American? "My view is that reformk should be guided by a simple we fix what’s broken and build on what works.
"Inb some cases, there’s broafd agreement on the steps we should In theRecovery Act, we’v e already made investments in healthh IT and electronic medicak records that will reduce medicao errors, save lives, save and still ensure privacy. We also need to invesf in prevention and wellness programs that help Americans live healthier lives. "But the real cost savingxs will come from changing the incentives of a syste that automatically equates expensive care with betterecare – from addressing flaws that increasew profits without actually increasing the quality of "We have to ask why places like the Geisinget Health system in rural Pennsylvania, Intermountain Healtg in Salt Lake City, or communities like Greem Bay can offer high-quality care at costs well beloaw average, but other place in America can’t.
We need to identify the best practicesw acrossthe country, learn from the success, and replicate that succesxs elsewhere. And we should change the warpef incentives that reward doctors and hospitals basedf on how many testse or proceduresthey prescribe, even if thosr tests or procedures aren’yt necessary or result from medical Doctors across this country did not get into the medicao profession to be bean countere or paper pushers; to be lawyers or businesx executives. They became doctors to heal people. And that’ss what we must free them to do. "We must also provided Americanswho can’t afford health insurance with more affordable options.
This is both a moral imperative and an economic because we know that when someone without health insurance is forced to get treatment atthe ER, all of us end up payinhg for it. "So what we’rre working on is the creation of somethingh called a Health Insurance Exchange which would allow youto one-stop shop for a health care compare benefits and and choose the plan that’x best for you. None of thesee plans would be able to deny coverage on the basiws ofa pre-existing condition, and all should includse an affordable, basic benefit package. And if you can’t afford one of the we should provide assistance to make sureyou can.
I also stronglgy believe that one of the options in the Exchange should be a public insuranceoptiobn – because if the private insurance companiees have to compete with a public option, it will keep them honesft and help keep prices down. "Now, covering more Americans will obviously cost a good deal of monety at a time wherwe don’t have extra to That’s why I have already promisec that reform will not add to our deficit over the next ten To make that happen, we have alreadhy identified hundreds of billions wort of savings in our budget savings that will come from steps like reducinh Medicare overpayments to insurance companies and rooting out waste, fraud and abus in both Medicare and Medicaid.
I will be outlining hundreds of billionas more in savings in the days to And I’ll be honest – even with these savings, reformk will require additional sources of That’s why I’ve proposed that we scale back how much the highest-incomew Americans can deduct on their taxezs back to the rate from the Reagan years – and use that monety to help finance health care. "In all these reforms, our goal is simple: the highest-quality healtu care at the lowest-possible We want to fix what’s brokeb and build on what As Congress moves forward on health care legislation in thecoming weeks, I understanx there will be different ideazs and disagreements on how to achieve this I welcome those ideas, and I welcom e that debate.
But what I will not welcomed is endless delay or a deniao that reform needsto happen. When it comews to health care, this countr y cannot continue on itscurrent path. I know therd are some who believe that reform istoo expensive, but I can assurde you that doing nothing will cost us far more in the cominb years. Our deficits will be higher. Our premiums will go up. Our wageas will be lower, our jobs will be and our businesseswill suffer. "Sop to those who criticize our I ask, “What is the alternative?
” What else do we say to all thosed families who now spend more on health care than housing or food What do we tell thoss businesses that are choosing between closingy their doors and letting their workerss go? What do we say to all thosed Americans like Laura, a woman who has workesd all her life; whose family has done everything a brave and proud woman whose child’sx school recently took up a penny drivde to help pay her medical bills? What do we tell them? "I believed we tell them that afterd decades of inaction, we have finally deciderd to fix what is broken about healthh care in America.
We have decided that it’w time to give every American quality health care at an affordable We have decided that if we invest in reforms that will bring downcosts now, we will eventuallyh see our deficits come down in the And we have decided to change the system so that our doctords and health care providers are free to do what they trainefd and studied and worked so hard to do: make peopld well again. That’s what we can do in this that’s what we can do at this and now I’d like to hear your thoughts and answerd your questions about how we get it Thank you.
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