Obama Takes Town Hall Tour To Montana

In New Hampshire on Tuesday, President Barack Obama expressed his desire to put an end to what he called discrimination on the part of insurance companies that deny coverage to Americans with pre-existing medical conditions. At a town hall held Friday in Belgrade, Montana, the President discussed how his health insurance reform plan will extend coverage to folks who've been dropped from their plans as a result of becoming sick.

"It's wrong, it's bankrupting families, it's bankrupting businesses, and we are going to fix it!" said the President.

Like Tuesday's town hall, Friday's forum occurred without incident. Obama told the audience that the majority of town halls across the country have been similarly civil, but the aim of certain cable networks to produce "good television" has distorted the public's perception.

"TV loves a ruckus," Obama explained.

Obama also decried the cable networks for having a collectively "selective memory" when it comes to ways in which his administration's stimulus plan, which passed earlier this year, has benefitted the state of Montana. The President evoked the stimulus in an attempt to persuade the audience to trust the government to effectively implement and manage important programs, such as health care reform.

Obama took on opponents of his plan, insisting that special interest groups and their political allies are using fear tactics to try and derail reform attempts. The President then cited a scary statistic of his own, reminding the audience that 14,000 Americans have lost health insurance each day since the start of the recession. With his finger pointed at the audience, Obama warned, "that could be you."

Following his remarks, Obama took a series of questions ranging from how his plan would be paid for, to whether or not the plan would raise taxes on the middle class, to how the plan would affect Medicaid and Medicare.

The President was asked to clarify how a public option plan would affect satisfied private insurance holders. In his response, Obama deviated from the standard "if you like the insurance you have, you can keep it" talking point he frequently employs, stating instead that "you would more than likely still be on your private insurance plan."

One audience member, who confessed to being an NRA card holder and enjoying the cable news coverage of the health care debate, asked the President to explain how he would pay for his plan without driving up the federal deficit or raising taxes. The questioner added that he wanted to hear Obama's response directly because he's fed up with the "spin."

Obama replied that he was amused by critics in both Congress and on television who have complained that the nation can't afford reform. The President repeated his support for lowering the amount of itemized deductions that individuals making over $250,000 per year can take, but noted that even if that idea is adopted Congress still must figure out a way to account for roughly $30 billion in funding per year.

"We've got to get over the notion that we can have something for nothing," said Obama.

The President mentioned his plan to cut government subsidies to insurance companies that cover medical costs which could ably be handled by Medicare. Doing so, he said, would save taxpayers upwards of $177 billion over the next decade. Obama also discussed streamlining the medicaid process by forcing hospitals and physicians' offices to share patients' records electronically.

The President took a question from a health insurance salesman who asked why the reform debate has become about insurance and not overall care. "I can't do insurance reform by itself," remarked Obama, implying that overhauling the nation's health care structure would first require a reshaping of its insurance system.

Commenting that he was running out of time, Obama agreed to take one last question from a woman in the crowd. However, rather than asking the President a question about his plan, she read Obama the preamble to the Montana state constitution; a curious ending to an otherwise typical Obama town hall.

Montana Governor to committee: Help us out

Today at a Joint Economic Committee hearing on the future of the war in Iraq costs House and Senate Democrat's reiterated their continuing criticism of the Bush Administrations economic handling of the ongoing operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Before the testimony even began members of the joint committee were in disagreement over whether or not the hearing should even be taking place. Congressman Kevin Brady (R-Tex.) voiced his frustration with the Democrat controlled committee when he stated “I question whether it is important to hold this hearing at all.”

Brady was the lone Republican at the hearing which featured testimony from Montana Governor Brian Schweitzer (D-Mon.) who was on hand to focus attention on the states continuing struggle to manage a dwindling National Guard due to the Iraqi War. With a state of just 950,000 people and a geography of 559 miles east to west and one in six adults being veterans, the state is plagued with issues involving everything from veterans healthcare to dealing with finding veterans jobs after leaving the armed services. Scheitzer believes that as a result of the strain the Iraq War has placed on its national guard that it could take as much as $28 million to fix it.

Adding to the testimony was Tom Tarantino who himself was a veteran from the war in Iraq who stated that for veterans finding jobs is not as easy as it sounds. “I found that there was fear attached to hiring a former combat soldier with the stigma of stress making employers view me as a potential liability to their company.” According to Tarantino approximately 18 percent of all recent Iraqi War veterans find themselves unemployed and that most employers just don’t want to take the risk in hiring a combat veteran.