Obama uses fear to sell health care

President Obama has begun a new phase of his effort to overhaul the nation’s health care system by trying to gird Americans for the perils that await them if his effort fails.

In recent speeches, including his weekly radio address Saturday, the president has begun using stark language to warn Americans that failure to act on his proposed health care reform could lead more families into bankruptcy and could leave them stranded when they get sick. To buttress this claim, the president described the findings of a newly released Treasury Department study that says, if nothing changes, nearly half of all Americans under the age of 65 will lose their health coverage at some point in the next 10 years.

“Everyone in this room knows what will happen if we do nothing,” Mr. Obama warned during his address to Congress last week. “Our deficit will grow. More families will go bankrupt. More businesses will close. More Americans will lose their coverage when they are sick and need it the most. And more will die as a result.”

That striking language was the preface for a new phase in his aggressive campaign for health care reform, which continues Saturday with his weekly radio address and the first in a series of rallies, this one in Minneapolis. He intends to revisit the topic again during speeches in Pittsburgh Tuesday, and in College Park, Md., on Thursday.

“It’s an anxiety that’s keeping more and more Americans awake at night,” Mr. Obama said. “We’re not just talking about Americans in poverty, either — we’re talking about middle-class Americans. In other words, it can happen to anyone.”

Todd Harris, a Republican political consultant, said after hearing the president’s speech to Congress that he was surprised by the approach the president was taking.

“One of the ironies is that he lashes out at people he considers demagogues. And yet in his own speech he says, if we don’t do this, people are going to die,” Mr. Harris said.

Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said the goal of Mr. Obama’s speech in Minneapolis Saturday will simply be to emphasize to the American public the consequences they face if congress fails to pass a health care reform plan.

“The president will talk about the perils of not acting … [and] what that will mean to families all over the country,” Mr. Gibbs said.

Those consequences were made clear, the president said, in the new Treasury report. The report was based on information collected from 17,123 Americans during the period from 1997 to 2006, but recently analyzed by the Treasury Department. It showed that over the decade, 48 percent of individuals went without health insurance for at least a month, 41 percent were without coverage for at least six months, and 36 percent were without coverage for a full year.

Time spent without health insurance was tallied cumulatively over the decade, not consecutively.

“While many Americans may have the misperception that benefits and protections for the uninsured help only a small slice of Americans, that’s not the case,” said a senior Treasury Department official, speaking to reporters on a conference call on the condition that he not be identified. “This can happen to any American. This really in a sense backs that up.”

The move comes after months of polling have showed increasing satisfaction on the part of many Americans with the health care they have, and increasing reluctance to spend more money for a minority of the country who are without insurance.

The administration hopes to persuade the country with this report that it is not just a minority of Americans who bear risk under the current system.

The senior Treasury official said the new report “really just backs up the claim that not only can it happen to you, but it does happen to almost half of Americans in a period of a decade.”

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