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Groups to press for health care reform
Four leading advocacy groups representing business, organised labour and retirees launched a new campaign on Tuesday to press President-elect Barack Obama to enact comprehensive health care reform, upping the pressure on him to tackle the issue quickly after he takes office.
- By Noam N. Levey, Los Angeles Times-Washington PostNews Service
- Published: 00:01 November 12, 2008
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Washington: Four leading advocacy groups representing business, organised labour and retirees launched a new campaign on Tuesday to press President-elect Barack Obama to enact comprehensive health care reform, upping the pressure on him to tackle the issue quickly after he takes office.
In a joint letter to Obama, the AARP, Business Roundtable, National Federation of Independent Businesses and Service Employees International Union are calling for a commitment that health-care reform be a priority in the new administration's first 100 days.
The groups plan to spend nearly $1 million (Dh3.67 million) to publicise their call in newspaper and television advertising in coming weeks.
"What we are doing is reminding not just the president but the Congress, as well, that ... this remains one of the most important issues facing the country," Business Roundtable president John Castellani said. In their letter, the groups explicitly link health-care reform with the nation's bleak economic conditions.
"Addressing skyrocketing health care costs is a critical component of stabilising household, national and global economies," they wrote in a letter to Obama published in Tuesday's USA Today.
"Inaction undermines the economic security of our families; limits the productivity of our workforce; stagnates job creation and wage growth; and threatens to crowd out investments in energy, education and infrastructure."
Obama made health-care reform a central plank of his presidential campaign, pledging a sweeping effort to expand coverage and lower costs.
But since his victory last week, Obama has not indicated how he plans a full-blown overhaul that could cost hundreds of billions of dollars and spark a political battle royal.
In a national radio address on Saturday, Obama made only a general reference to health-care reform, listing it with energy, education and tax relief as "key priorities."
Meanwhile, several senior House Democrats have indicated that they are uneasy about tackling broad health-care legislation in the first months of the new Congress. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, has talked about a new effort to expand the popular State Children's Health Insurance Programme, a more limited initiative that President Bush vetoed in 2007.
The unusual partnership, linking labour and business groups with the politically potent AARP, secured pledges from Obama to work across the aisles on the issue.
Church not to compromise on stand against abortion
Chicago: The head of the US Catholic bishops' group said on Monday that Barack Obama's election as president should be celebrated but he made it clear the church would not compromise its strict stand against abortion.
Obama won solid support from Catholics in last week's election, exit polls indicated, even though the church opposes the view, supported by the Illinois Democratic senator, that a woman has the right to choose whether to have an abortion. The US Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision in 1973 legalised abortion.
"Obama's election is a moment that touches more than our history when a country that once enshrined race slavery in its very constitutional order should come to elect an African-American to the presidency," said Cardinal Francis George of Chicago.
"In this, I truly believe, we must all rejoice," the head of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops told the group's semi-annual meeting in Baltimore.
- Reuters
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