After delivering a much-anticipated speech to the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday morning and meeting with world leaders in the afternoon, President Obama turned to health care this evening, sharing center stage with the Clinton family at an event to highlight the rollout of the Affordable Care Act.
Mr. Obama joined former President Bill Clinton, his wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton, the former secretary of state, and their daughter, Chelsea Clinton, at the Clinton family foundation’s annual convention just blocks away from United Nations Plaza. White House officials said the rare, hourlong appearance by the two presidents was an attempt to bring attention to next week’s opening of enrollment in health insurance exchanges that are at the center of the Affordable Care Act.
In fact, the conversation turned out to be a kind of wonky, policy-heavy discussion about the financial realities of America’s health care system and what Mr. Obama’s health care law will do about it. Mr. Clinton -- famous for being long winded -- was technically the interviewer and Mr. Obama the subject. But both men took long turns with the microphone.
“In the last three years, just since we started doing this, inflation in health care costs has dropped to 4 percent for three years in a row for the first time in 50 years -- 50 years,” Mr. Clinton said. “So before that, the costs were going up at three times the rate of inflation, for a decade.”
Later, Mr. Clinton noted that before the health care law went into effect, “eighty percent of the American states had only one or two companies providing health insurance who had more than 80 percent of the market. So there was in effect no price competition.”
Under the new law, he said, “it’s actually led to the establishment of more companies doing more bidding.”
Mr. Obama spent much of his time responding to critics of his health care plan by methodically laying out the benefits that people will receive once it is in place. And he urged young, uninsured people to sign up for coverage and said it will not cost them very much to do so.
“Just go to the website yourself, go to, you know, healthcare.gov, take a look at whether this is a good deal or not,” he said. “When people look and see that they can get high-quality, affordable health care for less than their cellphone bill, they’re going to sign up. They are going to sign up.”
The conversation was carried live on the internet and by some cable news channels. (CNN’s Wolf Blitzer announced the network would switch to a speech by Iran’s president after Mr. Obama noted that before his health care law there was “no aggregation of risk taking place for the insurers.”)
The two presidents continued the conversation online, at one point discussing the economics of insurance “pools” and why insurance companies insist on a mix of healthy and sick people. Mr. Obama explained what happens when that kind of mix isn’t present.
“People who are already sick or more likely to get sick, they’ll all rush out and buy insurance,” he explained. “People who are healthy, they say, you know what? I won’t bother. And you get what’s adverse selection.”
Mr. Clinton nudged the president to mention Arkansas (Mr. Clinton’s hometown,) prompting Mr. Obama to say that “you know, a little hometown bias here, there’s nothing wrong with that.”
Mrs. Clinton introduced her husband and Mr. Obama, noting the many similarities that the two men share.
“They’re both left-handed. They both love golf -- a game that does not often reciprocate the love they put into it,” she said. “They both are fanatic sports fans and go to great lengths to be in front of the TV or on the side of the court or the field. They both are master politicians. Each of them has only lost one election. They are both Democrats. They have fabulous daughters.”
And finally, she said with a broad smile: “They each married far above themselves.”
In recent months, Mr. Obama has reached out to Mr. Clinton to help with the health care rollout, which faces an aggressive Republican campaign across the country to derail it. Mr. Clinton, who failed to secure a health care overhaul while he was in office, has accepted the challenge. In addition to the event on Tuesday, Mr. Clinton delivered a high-profile health care speech this month in Little Rock, Ark.
But the spotlight on the Clintons has grown larger this year as speculation mounts about whether Mrs. Clinton will make another run for the presidency in 2016. And the former president is sharing a stage on Tuesday evening with Mr. Obama as the two talk about health care at a joint event hosted by the foundation.
Mrs. Clinton has been coy for years about whether she will run again for president after Mr. Obama leaves office. In an interview in New York Magazine this week, she conceded that she is thinking about it.
“I will just continue to weigh what the factors are that would influence me making a decision one way or the other,” she said in the interview, adding: “I’m not in any hurry. I think it’s a serious decision, not to be made lightly, but it’s also not one that has to be made soon.”
That answer — and the activities of some of her ardent supporters, who have begun raising money and organizing, just in case she decides to run — have prompted renewed interest in everything Clinton. At the foundation event, she is scheduled to introduce her husband and Mr. Obama.
Original source: obama - Google News
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