Meeting in Chicago with the nations largest physicians group….today President Barack Obama made another strong
pitch for overhauling the U.S. health care system.
Obama says its "a ticking bomb for the federal budget."
The President told members from the American Medical Association in Chicago today the existing system leaves too many uninsured and forces "excessive defensive medicine" by doctors worried about malpractice suits.
Obama told his audience he is open to requiring all Americans to
have health insurance. But he emphasized that the plan he envisions
would permit continuing help for those who cannot afford it on
their own. Obama said a "health care exchange" would be set up
for the uninsured to choose a plan.
He had his sharpest rhetoric yet for critics, calling them
"naysayers," "fear-mongers" and peddlers of "Trojan horse"
falsehoods who should be ignored. He warned interest groups and
lobbyists not to use "fear tactics to paint any effort to achieve
reform as an attempt to socialize medicine."
Without such change, Obama said the U.S. economy could end up in
the same shape as the failed General Motors Corporation and
Chrysler.
