CAT | White House
Ed. Note: Watch video of the meeting in our section on the President's proposal.
Today’s bipartisan health care meeting offered something you rarely see in Washington: an open, honest, productive discussion between the political parties. Leaders from across the political spectrum gathered at Blair House to exchange thoughts about an issue that touches all of us: rising health costs and unfair insurance company practices.
The President doesn’t view today’s meeting as a campaign debate or piece of theater – and he didn’t approach it as if it were scored like an Olympic event. The President went to Blair House focused on the substance – not the process – and he left the meeting focused on substance: how we put the American people in control of their own health care.
The President remains committed to enacting meaningful health insurance reform that will lower costs for families and small businesses by providing the largest middle class tax cut for health care in American history. He wants to enhance insurance choices and promote competition with a new insurance marketplace where people and small businesses will be able to have the same choices that every member of Congress will have. His proposal will provide common sense rules of the road and basic consumer protections that keep insurance companies honest and he’ll fight to make sure that no American is denied coverage because of a pre-existing medical condition.
Throughout the day, both sides found areas of agreement on important issues like:
Preventing waste and fraud in Medicare and Medicaid Addressing medical malpractice reform Reforming the insurance market Giving individuals more choices in coverage, and giving small businesses the opportunity to pool coverage for their employeesBut there were also important areas of disagreement.
There was a fundamental disagreement about whether we should set some common sense rules of the road to protect American families and small businesses from insurance company abuses. The President doesn’t believe we can afford to leave those decisions about your care to the insurers alone.
The President believes that a problem this big cannot be addressed incrementally. And while insuring 30 million people is going to cost money, it’s important to remember that most of this money is going to tax credits that will reduce premiums and help people get better coverage.
And while the President appreciated the participation and input of everyone today, he doesn’t think we can just scrap a year’s worth of work and start over. The millions of Americans that are suffering can’t afford another year-long debate. There’s too much at stake.
Dan Pfeiffer is White House Communications Director
Imagine a problem facing a community -- unemployment or homelessness, poverty or environmental degradation -- and there’s a good chance a group of college students is finding a way to tackle it. At the Corporation for National and Community Service, we honor these students and their universities with the President’s Higher Education Community Service Honor Roll. The Honor Roll is the highest Federal recognition a college or university can receive for its commitment to volunteering, service-learning, and civic engagement.
Today, we are honored to announce the recipients of the 2009 Presidential Awards:
General Community Service Awardees
Lee University, Cleveland, Tennessee Ohio Wesleyan University, Delaware, Ohio The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, North CarolinaSpecial Focus: Service to Youth from Disadvantaged Circumstances Awardees
Emory & Henry College, Emory, Virginia Raritan Valley Community College, Branchburg, New Jersey Willamette University, Salem, OregonIn addition to these outstanding winners, 736 colleges and universities were placed on the Honor Roll, with 115 of these receiving “With Distinction” honors.
The competition was tough – the winners had to demonstrate their level of student participation in service activities; scope, level of effort, innovation and effectiveness of their service projects; and overall institutional support to service-learning and volunteerism.
The importance of service to college students is underscored by one telling statistic: in the 2008-09 academic year, more than three million college students contributed over 300 million hours of service. College students take on community challenges by running after school programs, tutoring at-risk youth, building and weatherizing homes, offering computer classes, restoring natural parks, and much more.
I cannot overstate the important role that colleges and universities play in the broader national service movement. These institutions’ commitment to service can have an impact on students throughout their entire lives.
The Honor Roll is one of many ways that we promote student service-learning and civic engagement. Our Learn and Serve America program works with schools across the country to promote academic achievement and civic responsibility for more than one million students each year, and AmeriCorps annually engages thousands of college students in making a difference in their communities while earning money for their education.
I want to express my sincere congratulations to the recipients of the Presidential Award and the more than 700 additional schools that applied. I encourage every college and university to apply for the 2010 Honor Roll, and to find new and creative ways to engage their students in service throughout the year. Read more about all the colleges and universities that received the Honor Roll.
Patrick Corvington is the Chief Executive Officer of the Corporation for National and Community Service
Walking back to the White House to grab lunch after the morning session of the bipartisan meeting at the Blair House, the President stopped in front of the gate on Pennsylvania Avenue to answer a quick question about progress so far:
Q. How is it going, Mr. President?
THE PRESIDENT: It’s interesting. I mean, I don't know if it’s interesting watching it on TV, but it’s interesting being part of it.
Q. Are you making progress?
Q. How is the progress?
THE PRESIDENT: I think we're establishing that there are actually some areas of real agreement and we're starting to focus on what the real disagreements are. If you look at the issue of how much government should be involved -- the argument that Republicans are making really isn’t that this is a government takeover of health care, but rather that we’re insuring the -- or we're regulating the insurance market too much. And that's a legitimate philosophical disagreement. We'll hopefully be able to explore it a little more in the afternoon.
The afternoon session has begun, watch it live with real-time updates.
Imagine you were trying to measure the size of an iceberg and you only considered the part above the water. You’d be missing most of the picture, right?
That’s much like what happened in this story on the cost of construction jobs created by the Act. The article considers only the tip of the iceberg, misses what’s going on underneath, and thus gives a huge over-estimate of the cost of creating these jobs.
Technically, what’s missing here is the multiplier analysis (Keynes would be aghast!). Think about what it takes to build a road: when a state awards a contract to a road building firm, that firm has to purchase cement and other materials, and those purchases create jobs for producers of raw materials and manufacturers. They may have to buy or lease heavy construction equipment, supporting upstream jobs at factories. Hiring an actual crew to build the road is often the last step.
Interestingly, the story notes that money for construction projects isn’t just spent on direct hires--it pays for equipment and supplies too. What’s missing is that buying that equipment and supplies also creates jobs. By leaving out all those indirect jobs, the analysis undercounts the number jobs created by the contract and comes up with a cost per job that is way too high.
That problem is compounded by looking at just three months worth of job creation. About 75 percent of the recipients that reported said that their projects are less than half complete – pointing to future hiring off of those same dollars yet to come as projects ramp up.
As President Obama has stressed, we need to do much more to help get America get back to work. But when we’re looking at what we’ve done so far, let’s make sure we’re seeing the full picture.
Jared Bernstein is Chief Economist to Vice President Biden, and Executive Director of the Middle Class Task Force
While almost everybody has heard health insurance horror stories from stories in the local paper, from somebody they know, or even somebody closer to home, it’s easy to think it won’t happen to us personally. In many cases we never even see the worst of insurance company abuses until we get sick ourselves. But the rash of “jaw-dropping” premium increases, as the President put it in his Weekly Address earlier today, has shown that nobody is immune to bad practices from insurance companies as long as health reform is not in place.
As a recent report out of HHS documented, outrageous premium requests have hit every region of the country recently – up to 39% from one insurance company in California, 56% from another in Michigan, 24% in Connecticut, and 23% in Maine to name a few examples.
Yesterday we learned that our seniors are vulnerable as well. Seniors who remained enrolled in their Medicare Advantage plans – which are tied to private insurance — experienced rapidly increasing premiums, at 32 percent on average, between 2009 and 2010.
And today we learn that younger Americans can be just as vulnerable – indeed one California mother found that premiums for her kids were rising at a rate that makes even the other outrageous examples look modest. In what a MarketWatch headline calls a “health-care shocker”:
[Lori] Creasey, a Huntington Beach, Calif.-based attorney, said she received notices late last year for the two individual Anthem policies she bought for her college-age sons. For her 18-year-old son, Kyle, the monthly premium was climbing to $135 from $80, a 69% hike. Her 21-year-old, Walter, saw his premium jump to $139 from $84, a 65% increase.
"I was kind of shocked when I got [them]," Creasey said.
Lori and her sons aren’t the only Americans who have been shocked by their premium increases. And if we do nothing theirstories will become more and more common.
That’s why the President is committed to passing health reform and it’s why he has invited leaders from both parties in Congress to discuss the issue on Thursday. You can watch the meeting live here on our website.
We’re closer than ever to passing real health reform and stories like this show us how important it is to finish the job.
Dan Pfeiffer is White House Communications Director
First Lady Michelle Obama meets with British students, from schools across the London borough of Islington, in the Old Family Dining Room of the White House. The students, who won an Islington Black History Month essay competition, were rewarded with a trip to the United States sponsored by the U.S. Embassy in London.
On Thursday morning, The First Lady hosted ten students from schools across the London borough of Islington in the Old Family Dining Room. The students were winners of the Islington Black History Month essay competition, and rewarded with a trip to the White House sponsored by the U.S. Embassy in London.
The First Lady congratulated the kids and told them that if they continue to work hard, the opportunities are endless. “President Obama didn't wake up to become who he is. It was a lot of practice early on, of getting things done. You're going to slip and fall and trip along the way. He certainly did,” she said. “I did a little less than he did,” she laughed.
She talked about the importance of young people exchanging ideas and influencing other people’s lives. “Think about who you're going to help along, and never stop doing that.”
The students read excerpts from their winning essays and toured the White House.
Shortly after the plane crash in Austin, TX, John Brennan, Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism informed President Obama of the incident. The President expressed his concern, commended the courageous actions of the first responders and asked to be kept up to date as the investigation moves forward.
Robert Gibbs is White House Press Secretary
Take a look at what independent economists and economic observers from across the political spectrum have had to say about the success of the Recovery Act on its one-year anniversary:
Stuart Hoffman, chief economist at PNC Bank: "The stimulus worked," said Stuart Hoffman, chief economist at PNC Bank. Without it, "the unemployment rate would probably be closer to 11 percent" and the economy might not have grown at all last year.” [ABC News, 2/18/10]
Economist Stephen Herzenberg: “Cut through all the numbers, though, and this is what you find: The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act saved us from plunging into a second Great Depression… The Recovery Act brought the economy back from the brink. And these figures probably underestimate its impact, because they don't take market psychology into account. When the legislation passed, the economy was plunging at a pace similar to that of the 1930s. If Congress had sat on its hands, unemployment now could easily be 12 percent to 15 percent - and on its way to 20 percent.” [Philadelphia Inquirer, 1/17/10]
Mark Zandi of Moody’s Economy.com: “The economy has shed some three million jobs over the past year, but it would have lost closer to five million without stimulus,” said Mark Zandi, who is currently advising Congressional Democrats but also advised Senator John McCain, the 2008 Republican presidential nominee. “The economy is still struggling, but it would have been much worse without stimulus.” [New York Times, 1/17/10]
Lawrence Mishel, President of the Economic Policy Institute: “If you go to the economic forecasters, who make their money doing this, they confirm that the -- you know, we have saved around two million jobs in the process. If you look at what actually happened in the economy, in the beginning of 2009, we were losing 750,000 jobs a month. In the last three months, we were losing about 35,000. This wasn't by accident that we went from a deep, you know, decline in the economy to an actual growing economy…. And the administration's actually done something pretty marvelous of trying to actually track where all the money went, who got it, and how many jobs were created. And, if anything, they understate the amount of jobs being created. Yes, so, I think there's been a tremendous effort to actually document the impact of this.” [PBS Newshour, 2/17/10]
Nariman Behravesh, chief economist of IHS/Global Insight: “It prevented things from getting much worse than they otherwise would have been,’ Nariman Behravesh, Global Insight’s chief economist, says. ‘I think everyone would have to acknowledge that’s a good thing.” [New York Times, 2/17/2010]
OMB Watch: “[T]he one thing that cannot be denied is that the Act has substantially advanced the cause of fiscal transparency. We could complain that the transparency provisions of the Act are not perfect, but without the Act, we wouldn't even have anything to gripe about. We'd still be stuck arguing whether timely recipient reporting is a feasible goal or not. In this sense, the Recovery Act provided a convenient pilot program for fiscal transparency. Now, one year later, the Act has not only proved that broad-based recipient reporting is feasible, it has shown that the reporting is useful. By showing how multiple levels of recipients (although not all levels of sub-recipients) have used their federal funding, the Recovery Act has provided the government and its citizens an unprecedented ability to see where its money has gone.” [OMBWatch.org, 2/17/10]
Associated General Contractors economist Ken Simonson: “’The stimulus is saving construction jobs, driving demand for new equipment and delivering better and more efficient infrastructure,’ said Ken Simonson, an economist with Associated General Contractors, which represents a large part of the construction industry. Simonson calculated that roughly 15,000 jobs have been created or preserved for every $1 billion the government has spent on infrastructure projects, which is well above the association’s year-ago estimate of 9,700 jobs. He said that stimulus-funded road construction projects alone have created 280,000 jobs over the past year, as well as an unknown number of ancillary jobs for subcontractors supplying equipment and raw materials.” [San Diego Union Tribune, 2/17/10]
Rhone Resch, President and CEO of the Solar Energy Industries Association: “One year ago today, President Obama visited a solar installation to sign the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. The purpose of the bill was to stimulate immediate job growth with a strong emphasis on clean energy technologies like solar. And that is exactly what happened. In 2009, the Recovery Act helped the solar industry create 18,000 new American jobs. More than 50 new solar energy manufacturing plants are under construction now with the support of ARRA.” [Solar Energy Industries Association, 2/17/10]
Michael Graetz, a former George H.W. Bush Treasury official: "’It was right 40 years ago, and it's right today, and it's nice that something good comes out of the stimulus,’ says Michael Graetz, a Columbia Law School tax professor who did a stint at Treasury in the George H. W. Bush years. Today, beneath partisan gunfire and ideological clashes in Washington, one of the few things on which Democrats and Republicans in the Senate agree is that Build America Bonds should be made permanent. It probably will be.” [Wall Street Journal, 2/17/10]
Liz Oxhorn is Recovery Act Communications Director
Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said of the meeting today:
The President met this morning at the White House with His Holiness the XIV Dalai Lama. The President stated his strong support for the preservation of Tibet’s unique religious, cultural and linguistic identity and the protection of human rights for Tibetans in the People’s Republic of China. The President commended the Dalai Lama's "Middle Way" approach, his commitment to nonviolence and his pursuit of dialogue with the Chinese government. The President stressed that he has consistently encouraged both sides to engage in direct dialogue to resolve differences and was pleased to hear about the recent resumption of talks. The President and the Dalai Lama agreed on the importance of a positive and cooperative relationship between the United States and China.
President Barack Obama meets with His Holiness the Dalai Lama in the Map Room of the White House
This morning the Department of Health and Human Services released an alarming new report on health insurance companies looking to raise rates by double digits in states across the country. And in the ultimate irony, the insurers' lobby has now piped up to complain about being "vilified" – and say that the solution to the huge increases is to pass reform.
Let's get this straight: the insurance companies have spent millions and millions on television ads and lobbyists to block health insurance reform. You've seen the ads they’re running. They're pulling out all the stops to maintain that status quo.
They want to defeat reform, which means they will be able to continue to deny you coverage if you have a pre-existing condition and water down or eliminate your coverage when you need it the most. And as we saw in today’s report, they want to continue to raise your premiums by outrageous margins – often 5-10 times greater than health costs are rising. And all the while, they've been pulling down massive profits.
Of course the insurance companies don't like having the spotlight on their behavior. But at this critical juncture in our health reform debate, it's time to get beyond the TV ads and the press releases. This isn't "the politics of vilification," it's a sober look at the reality facing millions of hardworking American families and small businesses if we do nothing.
We’re going to continue to push for meaningful health insurance reform that gets control of skyrocketing costs, puts an end to insurance company abuses, extends coverage to millions of uninsured Americans, and lowers our deficit. Meanwhile, the insurers are defending their increases on American families by calling for passage of health reform, while running ads to defeat it... Imagine that.
Dan Pfeiffer is White House Communications Director