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President Obama has been describing the perils that are in store for the country if health care legislation is not passed in what appears to be a new phase of his effort to overhaul the nation's health care system.
He is using the public forum making speeches as well as his weekly radio address which he released Saturday. Taking every opportunity, the president has begun using graphic language to caution Americans that if there is a failure to act on his proposed health care reform, more families may be lead into bankruptcy and find themselves without health insurance when they get sick. To support this claim, the president presented the findings of a recently released Treasury Department study which claims that if nothing changes, as many as half of all Americans under the age of 65 will be losing their health coverage sometime during the next 10 years.
The way he puts it is that everyone should know the consequences of doing nothing, and warned during his last week’s address to Congress that the country’s deficit will grow, that additional families will be bankrupt, and that more businesses will have to close. He says that more Americans will be losing coverage and not have it available to them when they are sick and have the greatest need for it. He says that this means that as a result, more will die.
This remarkable language is the beginning of a new phase in his forceful campaign for health care reform. He continued this on Saturday with his radio address and again during the first of a series of rallies, which occurred in Minneapolis. He is planning to touch on this topic again during speeches planned for Pittsburgh on Tuesday and another at College Park on Thursday.
President Obama says that this anxiety and fear of loss of health coverage, is keeping more and more Americans awake at night. He says that this does not just refer to Americans who are living in poverty, either. He says that middle-class Americans are included. He says that this situation could occur to anyone.
During a speech that he delivered in Minneapolis, Obama criticized tactics being used by his opponents in this debate over health care. He says that they are using scare tactics instead of honest debate. Of course his reference to families living without coverage do not come under scare tactics.
He also repeats that Americans should not pay attention to those claims on the part of the opposition that Medicare benefits will be cut under his health care reform effort. He says he will never let that happen.
Republican political consultant Todd Harris, after hearing the president speak to Congress that he is surprised at the approach being taken by Obama.
While calling his competitors demagogues, Harris notes, in his own speech he says, if we don't do this, people are going to die.
Tags: Health Insurance