Trying to Forget the Crushing Defeats since 2009

President Obama addresses a joint session of congress in the Capitol Building. Photo by Pool/Getty Images North America

Boston- Continuing a pattern of political call-and-response that moved throughout his 2008 run for President, President Barack Obama moved to assuage oppositionist fears and push forward plans for comprehensive healthcare reform Wednesday night in a nationally-televised speech to both houses of Congress.

While Obama used more than half of his 45-minute address to relay details and ideas about proposed reform to legislators, his message frequently included emotional stories, and calls to action. “One man from Illinois lost his coverage in the middle of chemotherapy because his insurer found that he hadn’t reported gallstones that he didn’t even know about,” Obama said. “They delayed treatment and he died because of it. It is heartbreaking, it is wrong, and no one should be treated like that in the United States of America.”

Drawing on a comment early in the speech that both parties agree on nearly 80 percent of reform measures was reflected in vocal support, Obama used more than half of his speech to reveal the reforms on which both political sides have already agreed, reforms that include limiting insurance companies from denying claims based on pre-existing conditions, lifetime or yearly coverage caps, or recision, the revocation of benefits due to sickness.

Obama’s speech, however, also dipped into what opposition leaders like former Bush Administration Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove called “gratuitously, bitterly partisan” rhetoric in a post-speech interview with FOX News’ Bill O’Reilly.

Obama’s statement that most embodied Rove’s comments concerned GOP concerns that Health Care Reform was too costly. “Part of the reason I inherited a trillion-dollar deficit when I walked into the White House,” he said, “was because too many of the initiatives across the last decade were not paid for, including the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars, and the tax cuts for the rich.”

Alluding to his campaign messages of ‘hope and change,’ however, Obama closed his speech with an emotional call to action, referencing a quote from a letter written by the late Senator Edward M. Kennedy before his death on August 25. “At stake [in this debate] are not just details of policy,” Obama said, quoting Kennedy, “but fundamental principles of social justice, and the character of our country.”

“Over the past few months…we have seen Washington at its best, and at its worst,” he said, “but we are closer now than we have ever been. Now is the time to deliver.”