President Obama at the OFA National Health Care Forum

President Obama came to the DNC on Thursday afternoon for a national Health Care Forum with Organizing for America supporters and volunteers. During the 90 minute program, the President talked about what’s happening in the health reform debate in D.C. and around the country, before laying out our strategy and message moving forward. He took questions from the live audience in the DNC’s Wasserman Room, as well as from people who submitted questions via email and Twitter. Thousands of supporters participated in the meeting via webcast and conference call.

You can listen to the forum here. An excerpt from President Obama’s remarks is below. We’ll update with video once it becomes available.

"...The easiest thing to do as a politician is to do nothing. You don't offend anybody. You say all the right things. You don't rock the boat. Your poll numbers go up. Everybody in Washington says, boy, that guy is a great politician. Look at his poll numbers. And you can get away with doing that for years. But that's not why I came here. And that's not why you worked so hard to win this election. You came here because you knew that America can be a little fairer, a little more just, a little more efficient. We can provide better health care coverage; we can make sure that we use less foreign oil and develop clean energy here in the United States; that we can make our school system work for every child and not just some, and produce more scientists and engineers that are going to be the key to unlocking a 21st-century economy.

We understood that we're human, and government is a human enterprise, so it's imperfect, but we can do better than we've been doing. And this debate that we're having right now, this health care debate, is a test to that proposition. There are a whole bunch of folks in this town who were just waiting for this debate to take place because the storyline they want to write about is, all the naïve, idealistic folks -- 'Change We Can Believe In,' 'Yes We Can' -- that all their hopes were dashed, because this is a tough, cynical town, and we are going to be able to show them that basically you can't get anything done in this town. You can't change things. Everything always immediately becomes partisan. Government is way too complicated and Congress is way too paralyzed and the special interests are way too powerful to bring about meaningful, big changes that help the American people.

That's the storyline they're operating on, but that's the storyline we've been fighting against this entire time. From the day we announced this race, we were fighting against that. And they have been trying to write that story again and again and again. We are not going to give up now. We are not going to give up now. We are going to get this done, and show the American people that government can work for them.

Thank you, everybody. God bless you.

Comments (4) «

‘OUR’ CONTROL OVER HEALTH CARE: Capps on Co-Pay

Like B.B. King says, ‘we’re’ Paying the Cost to be the Boss

I heard from the media yesterday that there will be Capps on co-pay in the health care plan. This is one way that your government ‘and you’, the taxpayers, are going to establish ‘control’ over health care. Control is part of the administration’s three part solution, along with competition and cost.

We are not talking the Bush Administration: ‘you’ will have the power to voice your opinions to your Congress people about this plan and from now on vote accordingly to your desires for any amendment (Democratic or Republican.).

Just remember, sometimes when your government establishes more control, you also establish more control.

1

Hope4U on August 21, 2009 at 07:18 AM

Actually, that is a Capp on Co-Pay is going to be considered in one of the plans Congress is looking at.

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Hope4U on August 21, 2009 at 11:45 AM

YOUR HEALTH CARE PLAN COST: 1/27 of America’s 2008 Tax Revenue, Each Year

The New York Times has documented America’s 2008 Tax Revenue at 2.7 trillion dollars (two-trillion and 700 billion dollars.)

(For those of you who get flustered by your trillions and can only think in Iraq war billions, ‘one’ trillion equals 999 billion + 1 billion!)

The Obama Administration’s projected health care cost proposal is 1 Trillion over ‘ten years’, that is ‘one-hundred-billion’ dollars each year of America’s rounded off two-and-a-half-trillion-dollars-a-year tax revenue average. (Congress will probably ax some of the money before it is approved of, at that.)

I am angry that the media is not asking if the one-hundred-billion dollars a year is on top of what the government and taxpayers ‘already pays’ and can ‘already afford’ for Medicare and Medicaid each year instead of the media continuing to spin the math anxiety about it. CAN’T WE GET SOME FACTS FROM THE AMERICAN MEDIA HERE INSTEAD OF FROM A LITTLE BLOGGER LIKE ME?

Your country has money: $14 Trillion was America’s 2008 GDP (The Cost of Goods Produced and Sold by America here and abroad in 2008, in one year alone) regardless of all the unemployment and bankruptcies America had last year.

Now if 9/11 didn’t ruin destitute country’s in Africa’s faith in America, people's attitude that America, with still the biggest GDP in the world, can't afford its own health care might. Inferring that America can’t even afford 100-billion a year out of its trillion's in decades to keep its own people alive and well might make other countries lose all hope in ever having a wealthy country their selves!

3

Hope4U on August 21, 2009 at 12:01 PM

thanks for sharing information..

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Gold 401k

4

Craigbernard on August 27, 2009 at 12:37 AM

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