US President Barack Obama has accused the Republicans of trying to “scare the heck” out of people in terms of his health care reform proposals, BBC News Online reports.
Anti-reform campaigners had created “bogeymen out there that just aren’t real”, he said at a town-hall style meeting in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. “Let’s disagree over things that are real, not these wild representations that bear no resemblance to anything that has actually been proposed,” says The Daily Telegraph.
Passing a healthcare reform bill is Mr Obama’s top domestic priority for 2009, the President had already called on the Senate and the House to agree their own versions of a bill before the August, but unfortunately lawmakers missed the deadline.
Republicans have portrayed Mr Obama’s health care plans as amounting to a government takeover of the private American healthcare system, leading to a British-or Canadian-style approach.
Mr Obama tried to turn the focus onto insurance companies, arguing that Americans were often “held hostage” because they were denied coverage or charged fees they could not afford, Toby Harnden writes on The Daily Telegraph.
He said: “I believe it is wrong, it is bankrupting families and businesses and that is why we’re going to pass health insurance reform in 2009.”
He insisted: “You will not be waiting in any lines. This is not about putting the government in charge of your health insurance. I don’t believe anyone should be in charge of your health insurance decisions but you and your doctor.
“I don’t think government bureaucrats should be meddling, but I also don’t think insurance company bureaucrats should be meddling. That’s the health care I believe in.”
Apart from these accusations made by his Republican opponent, Sarah Palin, the former Republican vice-presidential candidate said last week the president wanted to set up “death panels” of government officials with the power to determine whether disabled or elderly Americans are “worthy of healthcare”, the BBC reports.
However in fact, under proposals drawn up by the US House of Representatives, the government would pay for elderly American to receive voluntary consultations with doctors to discuss their end-of-life care.
“The rumour that’s been circulating a lot lately is this idea that somehow the House of Representatives voted for death panels that will basically pull the plug on Grandma because we’ve decided that its too expensive to let her live anymore,” said Mr Obama.
“It turns out that I guess this arose out of a provision in one of the House bills that allowed Medicare to reimburse people for consultations about end-of-life-care, setting up living wills, the availability of hospice, etcetera.
“So the intention of the members of Congress was to give people more information so that they could handle issues of end-of-life care when they’re ready, on their own terms. It wasn’t forcing anybody to do anything,” The Daily Telegraph reports.
No comments:
Post a Comment