Canceled.LTroll.8
Banned
Just a few months into our campaign, I promised that by the end of my first term in office, I would sign legislation to reform our health insurance system.
On Tuesday, after a year of debate, a century of trying, after so many of you shared your stories and your heartaches and your hopes, that promise was finally fulfilled, and today, health insurance reform is the law of the land all across America.
Just like the campaign that led us here, this historic change didn’t start in Washington.
It began when people had the courage to stand up in town hall meetings and talk about how insurance companies were denying their families coverage because of a preexisting condition.
It began when folks wrote letters about how premium hikes of 40 and 50 and a hundred percent were forcing them to give up their insurance.
It began when countless small business owners and families and doctors shared stories about a health care system that works better for the insurance industry than it does for the American people.
So this is your victory, because when the special interests sent an army of lobbyists to Congress, they blanketed the airwaves with millions of dollars of negative ads, you mobilized and you organized and you refused to give up.
When the pundits were obsessing over who was up and who was down and how is this affecting the Obama administration and what’s going on over in the House, you never lost sight of what was right and what was wrong.
You knew this was not about the fortunes of one party, this was about the future of our country.
Today, because of what you did, that future looks stronger and more hopeful and brighter than it has in some time, because of you.
There’s been plenty of fear-mongering, plenty of overheated rhetoric. You turn on the news, you’ll see the same folks are still shouting about there’s going to be an end of the world because this bill passed.
From this day forward, all of the cynics, all the naysayers, they’re going to have to confront the reality of what this reform is and what it isn’t.
They’ll have to finally acknowledge this isn’t a government takeover of our health care system.
They’ll see that if Americans like their doctor, they’ll be keeping their doctor.
You like your plan? You’ll be keeping your plan. No one is taking that away from you.
But here’s what the bill does. It finally tells the insurance companies that in exchange for all the new customers they’re about to get, they’ve got to start playing by a new set of rules that treats everybody honestly and treats everybody fairly.
The days of the insurance industry running roughshod over the American people are over.
Now, it’s going to take about four years to implement this entire plan, because we’ve got to do it responsibly and we need to do it right.
So I just want to be clear. That means that health care costs won’t go down overnight; not all the changes are going to be in place; there are still going to be aspects of the health care system that are very frustrating over the next several years.
But, we have built into law all sorts of measures that in the years to come, health care inflation, which has been rising about three times as fast as people’s wages, is finally going to start slowing down.
We’ll start reducing the waste in the system, from unnecessary tests to unwarranted insurance subsidies. So, that over time, Americans are going to save money.
Tt’s because of you that we are going to keep on going to make sure that we fulfill every promise to every child in this country for a brighter future.
Thank you. God bless you, and God bless the United States of America.
On Tuesday, after a year of debate, a century of trying, after so many of you shared your stories and your heartaches and your hopes, that promise was finally fulfilled, and today, health insurance reform is the law of the land all across America.
Just like the campaign that led us here, this historic change didn’t start in Washington.
It began when people had the courage to stand up in town hall meetings and talk about how insurance companies were denying their families coverage because of a preexisting condition.
It began when folks wrote letters about how premium hikes of 40 and 50 and a hundred percent were forcing them to give up their insurance.
It began when countless small business owners and families and doctors shared stories about a health care system that works better for the insurance industry than it does for the American people.
So this is your victory, because when the special interests sent an army of lobbyists to Congress, they blanketed the airwaves with millions of dollars of negative ads, you mobilized and you organized and you refused to give up.
When the pundits were obsessing over who was up and who was down and how is this affecting the Obama administration and what’s going on over in the House, you never lost sight of what was right and what was wrong.
You knew this was not about the fortunes of one party, this was about the future of our country.
Today, because of what you did, that future looks stronger and more hopeful and brighter than it has in some time, because of you.
There’s been plenty of fear-mongering, plenty of overheated rhetoric. You turn on the news, you’ll see the same folks are still shouting about there’s going to be an end of the world because this bill passed.
From this day forward, all of the cynics, all the naysayers, they’re going to have to confront the reality of what this reform is and what it isn’t.
They’ll have to finally acknowledge this isn’t a government takeover of our health care system.
They’ll see that if Americans like their doctor, they’ll be keeping their doctor.
You like your plan? You’ll be keeping your plan. No one is taking that away from you.
But here’s what the bill does. It finally tells the insurance companies that in exchange for all the new customers they’re about to get, they’ve got to start playing by a new set of rules that treats everybody honestly and treats everybody fairly.
The days of the insurance industry running roughshod over the American people are over.
Now, it’s going to take about four years to implement this entire plan, because we’ve got to do it responsibly and we need to do it right.
So I just want to be clear. That means that health care costs won’t go down overnight; not all the changes are going to be in place; there are still going to be aspects of the health care system that are very frustrating over the next several years.
But, we have built into law all sorts of measures that in the years to come, health care inflation, which has been rising about three times as fast as people’s wages, is finally going to start slowing down.
We’ll start reducing the waste in the system, from unnecessary tests to unwarranted insurance subsidies. So, that over time, Americans are going to save money.
Tt’s because of you that we are going to keep on going to make sure that we fulfill every promise to every child in this country for a brighter future.
Thank you. God bless you, and God bless the United States of America.
