Republicans wave copies of their health care bill in objection to President Barack Obama’s proposals Wednesday during a joint session of Congress. At one point, a Republican lawmaker shouted, ‘You lie!’ at Obama.
Declaring that he is determined to be the last president confronted with reshaping health care in America, President Barack Obama proposed a 10-year, $900 billion plan Wednesday night to overhaul a system that he said had left the country at “a breaking point.”
In a prime-time address to a joint session of Congress, Obama laid out the specifics of his proposal to change the way Americans’ medical care is paid for, responding to critics who have complained that he has not set forth precisely what he thinks the new program should be.
Obama outlined what he called the favored proposals of extremes on both sides of the health care debate: a single-payer system like Canada’s, in which the government provides coverage for everyone, and a dismantling of the employer-based system, leaving individuals to buy insurance on their own.
The president rejected both options, saying they would represent “a radical shift that would disrupt the health care most people currently have” — something that he said could not be allowed to happen. Instead, he charted a middle course on the most contentious issue of the entire debate — whether the government should directly pay for some Americans’ health insurance beyond the current Medicare and Medicaid programs.
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