Health Care Is Topic A at Biden Task Force Meeting in Va.
By Yamiche Alcindor
Vice President Biden convened a meeting of the administration's Middle Class Task Force in Alexandria today to discuss how Obama's health care reform proposals will affect older Americans, taking questions for an hour before an audience of more than a hundred senior citizens.
Today's meeting, held with AARP, took place at the Dr. Oswald Durant Memorial Center, where Biden was joined by Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, White House Office of Health Reform Director Nancy-Ann DeParle and Barry Rand, CEO of the AARP.
Biden emphasized the reform proposals' focus on cutting health-care costs for middle and lower income Americans. "We've never been so close," Biden said. "Everyone sees that we need it and we are going to get it right this time."
Biden called the current health care system sick, saying that, as someone who has himself received over $100,000 in medical care, he understands the need to reform the system. If healthcare reform isn't passed soon, the amount of money spent on health care may one day exceed every other U.S. expense combined, the vice president warned. Biden also discussed the need to adjust pay scales for primary care doctors in a way that will make individuals want to go into the profession.
"We're doing things that we know are going to save you, your children and your grand children billions of dollars over the next years. But we're not able to prove it," Biden said. He said the Obama administration has studied the effects of their proposed reforms and that reports have shown that the plan will save money.
"We're not going to increase the deficit. By covering more people you'll save money," he said.
Biden explained that under the reform bill drug and insurance companies would have incentives to help make sure every American was covered.
Since 2002, health-care costs have increased by 57 percent in America, he said.
Marian O. Williams sat just feet away from the vice president wearing a red AARP T-shirt. The Washington native and dozens of other AARP members took a 20-minute bus ride from the District to learn how the health care reform bill would effect them. Williams said she hopes the bill will help fix the country's "broken health care system."
She said some of her friends on Medicaid and Medicare can't their prescription medications or are forced to cut pills in half. "It makes me sad to think some have to forgo meals for doctor visits," she said.
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July 16, 2009; 4:20 PM ET
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Posted by: Mecaenas | July 17, 2009 11:09 AM | Report abuse
The healthcare plan is not going to save anything. It is going to doom the US economy totally. It will bankrupt many middle class citizens and put many many people out of work and cut available jobs greatly. The bottom line is that he really does not know what he is talking about. Why he is sent out to speak in public I will never be able to figure out. He is a total embarrassment to our country and to the administration.
Posted by: nancycrichton | July 17, 2009 2:00 PM | Report abuse
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I would like to declare myself as a disinterested party in the US health care debate in as much as I am English and live in England and use the English NHS - National Health Socialised insurance Scheme.
VP Mr Biden seems to be describing something quite different from what I had been led to believe will happen if health care reforms take place in the US. His quote comments just don't make sense.
e.g By covering more people we will save you money" and again " That insurance companies would have incentives to make sure everyone was covered." This is the first time I have heard about giving incentives to already fat cat health insurance companies that most people hold with but little regard, with "incentives to cover everybody." One wonders .. what incentives.
"We will save you, your children and grand children billions of dollars" says Mr Boden. I read the scheme will have an estimate cost of a trillion .. so who will pay the trillion if millions will save billions.
The Europeans have been working a socialised healthcare system for 50/60.years. No one here would dream of stopping it .. it is a sacrosanct. What little I am reading here from Mr Biden's remarks is of a hotch potch stiched together patchwork which is confusing to say the least and for my money reassures nobody that the wory about healthcare needs and costs have been removed.
Maybe it need a competant national newspaper to undertake a revue of European health care schemes and then place that analysis before a discerning US public for consideration and debate.