WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama on Wednesday marked major provisions of the new healthcare law that go into effect today and visited with Americans who stand to benefit immediately as he stepped up efforts to repulse Republican attacks on his signature domestic initiative.
Yet even before he started touting early provisions of the law, the president sought to counter the belief among some that the health-care overhaul distracted him from addressing what many voters view as the more pressing matter: the economy.
“Obviously the economy has been uppermost in our minds,” began Obama, speaking in his shirt sleeves on the back patio of the Falls Church, Va., home of Paul and Frances Brayshaw. “So much of our focus day-today is trying to figure out how do we just make sure that this recovery that we’re slowly on starts accelerating in a way that helps folks all across the country.”
But he argued that addressing the high cost and limited accessibility of health care was just as fundamental to the nation’s fiscal health.“Sometimes I fault myself for not having been able to make the case more clearly to the country,” he said.
“Health care was one of those issues that we could no longer ignore. ... Anybody out there who is concerned about the deficit: The single biggest driver of our deficit is the ever-escalating costs of health care. ... It was bankrupting families, companies and our government.”
Republican lawmakers are staking out plans to try to roll back parts of the law should they take control of Congress next year.
“The six-month anniversary of Obamacare will be a lonely one for President Obama and congressional Democrats,” Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele said Wednesday. “The president’s plan was unpopular when it was passed in March, and today the wholesale takeover of the American health-care system is undeniably radioactive.”
House Republicans continued to question Obama’s assertions, which he repeated Wednesday, that the law will lower premiums, pointing to double-digit increases recently announced by many insurers. A blog posting on the website of the minority leader, Rep.John Boehner of Ohio, predicted the law would “raise health care costs, explode the federal deficit and create a byzantine bureaucracy.”
Obama responded to Republican congressional leaders who have campaigned on a threat to repeal the act.
“I want them to look you in the eye,” he told his audience in Virginia, and explain their opposition to a law that is projected to cover 32 million uninsured and reduce the deficit by $143 billion over 10 years.
The Republican strategy “makes sense in terms of politics and polls,” Obama said, an acknowledgment that the electorate is divided and that many swing districts are hostile. “It just doesn’t make sense in terms of actually making people’s lives better.”
NEW BENEFITS
Though many of the most sweeping benefits do not go into effect for years, millions of consumers stand to gain substantial new protections starting this fall. (The benefits apply to plan years starting today, although many Americans may not see the changes until January when their health plans renew.)
Insurance companies, for example, will be prohibited from canceling policies when customers get sick or denying coverage to sick children.
The law will allow parents to keep their adult children up to age 26 on their family plans and will bar insurers from placing lifetime caps on how much they will pay when their customers get ill.
And many consumers will get new rights to appeal claims that are denied by insurers and win new access to preventive care without being asked for co-pays.
Many more changes, including new guarantees that all Americans can get coverage and millions of dollars of subsidies to pay premiums, will go into effect in 2014.
Other changes have already started, such as new tax breaks for small businesses and the gradual phase-out of the coverage gap in the Medicare Part D drug benefit.
A recent survey by the nonprofit Kaiser Family Foundation found that nearly half of the country’s senior citizens believe erroneously that the law creates a new government panel to make decisions about end-of-life care for people on Medicare.
“The messaging wars and the rhetoric are really muddying the picture,” said Mollyann Brodie, who oversees the Kaiser poll.
On Wednesday, Sen. Mike Enzi of Wyoming, the senior Republican on the Senate health committee, called for senators to back his resolution criticizing a provision of the law designed to discourage businesses from scaling back health benefits.
The provision would place new requirements on health plans provided by employers, such as providing free preventive care, if employers substantially raise co-pays, deductibles or other employee contributions.
PRYOR: LAW NOT ‘SACRED’
Democratic Sen. Mark Pryor of Arkansas said Wednesday that the health-care overhaul isn’t perfect, but it’s an improvement.
“As people see the real results of this new law, I think they will be generally pleased. ... This is a very real piece of legislation that has very tangible benefits for people,” he said during a conference call.
Pryor said it’s unlikely Republicans can muster the support to repeal the law, but he added that it’s quite likely Congress will revisit the law to make changes over the next several years.
“I have no doubt that we will amend and adjust this legislation as it goes through,” he said. “This is not sacred. This is a piece of work that I’m sure there’s some gaps in it; I’m sure there’s some unintended consequences.”
The White House on Wednesday again tried to sell the overhaul by surrounding the president with Americans who are benefiting, including several small-business owners who plan to use the tax credits and senior citizens who have received $250 rebate checks to help them with their prescription-drug bills.
The gathering was in the backyard of Paul Brayshaw, who suffers from hemophilia and hit a lifetime limit in his private health insurance coverage.
Gail O’Brien of Keene, N.H., a Montessori school teacher whose employer does not offer insurance, spoke of her anguish on being diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma earlier this year.
“I was scared to death, not as much that, ‘Oh, I’ve got cancer’ ... It was, ‘How am I going to pay for these outrageous bills that are going to come our way,’” she said.
Convinced that she would have to tap the savings she and her husband had amassed for their two sons’ college tuition, O’Brien said she was elated to learn that she could instead apply to one of the new statebased “high risk” pools the law recently established for people with pre-existing conditions.
“You don’t know how this has changed my life,” said O’Brien, who wore a blue scarf to cover the hair she has lost through her cancer treatments. “I personally thank you, President Obama, so much.” Information for this article was contributed by Noam N. Levey of Tribune Washington Bureau, by N.C. Aizenman and Anne E. Kornblut of The Washington Post, by Erica Werner, Julie Pace and Darlene Superville of The Associated Press, by Kevin Sack of The New York Times and by Jane Fullerton of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 09/23/2010