22 Mar 2010

Healthcare: Obama’s crunch issue

International Editor

Obama won a landmark battle to extend health insurance to millions of Americans in March 2010. Channel 4 News visited US hospitals and talked to documentary maker Michael Moore about Obama’s change.

Healthcare protestors. Obama won a landmark battle to extend health insurance to millions of Americans in March 2010. (Getty)

President Barack Obama won a narrow victory as the House of Representatives gives final approval to an overhaul of US healthcare, expanding insurance coverage to nearly all Americans.

In a late-night vote House Democrats approved the health policy by a narrow margin of 219 votes to 212. No Republican voted in favour of the new policy, seen as the most dramatic change in four decades.

The overhaul will extend health coverage to 32 million Americans, expand the government health plan for the poor, impose new taxes on the wealthy and bar insurance practices such as refusing to cover people with pre-existing medical conditions.

“Tonight, at a time when the pundits said it was no longer possible, we rose above the weight of our politics.” Barack Obama

The vote finally ended a year-long political battle with Republicans that consumed Congress and dented Obama’s approval ratings. Several US presidents have strived for almost 100 years to pass a healthcare reform bill – most recently being Democrat Bill Clinton in 1994.

March’s vote sends the bill, already passed by the Senate, to Obama to sign into law.

In a late-night appearance at the White House president said they had risen above critics who wanted the bill to fail.

“Tonight, at a time when the pundits said it was no longer possible, we rose above the weight of our politics,” he said.

“This legislation will not fix everything that ails our healthcare system, but it moves us decisively in the right direction. This is what change looks like.”

House Democrats hugged and cheered in celebration as their vote count hit the magic number of 216, and chanted: “Yes we can.” Every Republican opposed the bill, and 34 Democrats joined them in voting against it.

Republican and industry critics said the $940bn bill was a heavy-handed intrusion in the healthcare sector that will drive up costs, increase the budget deficit and reduce patients’ choices.

Both parties geared up for another battle over the healthcare bill in the campaign leading up to November’s congressional elections, and opponents across the country promised to challenge the legislation on the state level.

Michael Moore: ‘disappointing’

Documentary maker Michael Moore told Channel 4 News the bill was still a disappointment. “We remain the only western industrialised country without universal healthcare, so that is a huge disappointment.

“But there is probably a bigger thing going on here today, which is that finally after a year in office, President Obama has an important victory under his belt and he can pull it off. And so now he should build on that.

“There are some good things about it, but in the end the private insurance companies still control everything in this country. I don’t know why they are so upset today that they lost, because they didn’t really lose.

“There are some good things about it, but in the end the private insurance companies still control everything in this country.” Michael Moore

“The bill mandates that anybody in America that doesn’t have health insurance has to write a cheque now to a private, profit-making insurance company for insurance.

“It must seem odd to you to see American politicians stand there on the floor of Congress and scream about ‘no, we don’t want to be able to see a doctor if we get sick, we don’t need that, we’re Americans, we can heal ourselves, shock and awe.’ I just don’t get it.

“It’s the kind of bill that Republicans used to pass when they were a little kinder and gentler. This isn’t real universal healthcare. Americans still do not have that, and insurance companies still call the shots.”

Ahead of President Obama’s pivotal speech on healthcare, International Editor Lindsey Hilsum spoke to patients and doctors in the US about the emotive reform debate.

She described her encounters on the World News Blog: I met Mary Elswick at the Free Clinic in Cleveland, Ohio. Too poor to afford health insurance, she has to rely on charity to treat her gout, neck and leg pains, and a myriad of other complaints, yet she doesn’t like the sound of President Obama’s healthcare reform.

“I don’t know about the government controlling it… That’s a little scary to me as far as socialism and stuff,” she said. I pointed out that the plan for a government health insurance scheme might mean she too could be insured. She was unconvinced.

“I dunno if it’s from watching the news or what, but I just feel like we wanna keep our individual freedoms,” she said.

All through the summer, Americans have been bombarded with TV ads and talk shows telling them that the healthcare reform proposed by President Obama would mean turning their private system into something like the NHS, which is “socialised medicine”.

Read Lindsey Hilsum's full blog post and watch her video report below.