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Obama Gives Long Answer To A Short Health Care Question
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April 3, 2010 12:30 a.m. EST
Topics: government, healthcare policy, politics, executive (government), economy, business and finance, health, economy, United States
Tejinder Singh - AHN News Correspondent
Washington, DC, United States (AHN) - President Barack Obama took his oratory skills to greater lengths today as he provided a woman named Doris, from Lake Wylie, North Carolina, with a 17 minutes and 12 seconds answer in more than 2500 words
At the North Carolina event, after the speech during a question-answer session, the woman asked the president whether it was a "wise decision to add more taxes to us with the health care" package. "We are over-taxed as it is," Doris added without mincing words.
Obama started, "Well, let's talk about that, because this is an area where there's been just a whole lot of misinformation, and I'm going to have to work hard over the next several months to clean up a lot of the misapprehensions that people have.”
"Number one is that we are the only -- we have been, up until last week, the only advanced country that allows 50 million of its citizens to not have any health insurance," he said.
"Number two, you don't know who might end up being in that situation," he said, then carried on explaining further still.
"Point number three is that the way insurance companies have been operating, even if you've got health insurance you don't always know what you got, because what has been increasingly the practice is that if you're not lucky enough to work for a big company that is a big pool, that essentially is almost a self-insurer, then what's happening is, is you're going out on the marketplace, you may be buying insurance, you think you're covered, but then when you get sick they decide to drop the insurance right when you need it," Obama said..
Then he mentioned a "final point," before starting again with another list -- of three points.
"What we said is, number one, we'll have the basic principle that everybody gets coverage," he said, adding a few more points to his already longish answer.
Obama had a practical example for the woman from Lake Wylie, saying, “If you’ve got a house and you’ve got a big hole in your roof, and it’s raining and snowing through that roof and there are some people who are inside the rooms where the roof is okay and they’re nice and warm, and then you got a few -- your family members in that room where there’s a big hole in the roof and they’re shivering, and they’re cold -- if you repair the roof, that’s going to cost some money.”
“But if all the water damage from your floors and all the heat that’s going out of the roof, you count all those savings, over time it may turn out that it actually is saving you money and, by the way, all those family members now are warm, too. You’re not the only one who’s warm, right? That’s essentially what we’re trying to set up,” Obama added.
Obama realized he had gone on for a while and apologized saying, "Boy, that was a long answer. I'm sorry," but quickly adding, "I hope I answered your question."
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