CINCINNATI -- President Barack Obama shifted into campaign mode Monday, declaring that the time for debate on health care is over and vowing to move fast to enact a sweeping overhaul of the system this year.
Speaking at a boisterous Labor Day rally of AFL-CIO members, Mr. Obama led the first "fired up, ready to go" chant of his presidency, reaching back to a hallmark of his presidential campaign. He recounted a low moment from his quest for the White House to try to seize control of a health-care debate that strayed from his grasp this summer.
Speaking in Ohio, President Barack Obama told union members he still believes in the "public option" as part of health-care reform. Courtesy of Reuters.
"Every debate at some point comes to an end," he told a loudly supportive crowd. "At some point it's time to decide. At some point it's time to act. Ohio, it's time to act and get this thing done."
After a summer of town-hall meetings and informal talks, Mr. Obama fell back on storytelling and oratory, two days before he is to address a joint session of Congress on his vision of health-care legislation. Obama aides say he will offer more specifics about what he can and can't accept in a final bill, but they also said the tone he struck here signaled the direction in which he will go Wednesday night. He will emphasize what the health-care system would look like without change, depicting a scenario of rising costs, more uninsured Americans and more efforts by insurance companies to block those with pre-existing medical conditions from buying insurance, they said.
"We know what that future looks like: insurance companies raking in the profits while discriminating against people because of pre-existing conditions, denying or dropping coverage when you get sick," Mr. Obama told the Cincinnati crowd. "It means you're never negotiating about higher wages, because you're spending all your time just protecting the benefits you already have. It means premiums continuing to skyrocket three times faster than your wages, more families pushed into bankruptcy, more businesses cutting more jobs, more Americans losing their health insurance, 14,000 every day."
He distilled his call for health-care changes down to a simple phrase, something Democrats have been pleading for: "That's what we're talking about: Security and stability for folks who have health insurance. Help for those who don't, the coverage they need at a price they can afford."
He also once again reiterated his support for a government-run insurance plan to be offered to individuals and small businesses as one option in a basket of policies to be sold on an insurance exchange.
For supporters of an uncompromising, liberal view of how to change health care, the president's speech here was a tonic.
"I wish he had given that speech he gave today a month ago, two months ago," said Richard Trumka, secretary-treasurer of the AFL-CIO, who reiterated that his union wouldn't campaign for politicians unless they back a so-called public option.
"The most important thing that he did here was take this thing head-on," said Ohio Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown. "He's beginning to lead."
But the president's tone may have exposed some disunity in Democratic ranks because he spoke as Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D., Mont.) put forward a more moderate version of a health-care overhaul. The Baucus plan substitutes nonprofit insurance cooperatives for a government-run insurance option.
White House spokesman Robert Gibbs was noncommittal when asked about the Baucus plan. "Obviously we'd be pleased if the Finance Committee throughout the course of the next few days came up with a proposal that can get through their committee, hopefully with bipartisan support," he said.
But he reiterated that Mr. Obama still regards the public option as a "valuable tool" and "an important part of this proposal."
The president also challenged opponents to come up with options that would cover the uninsured, grant more economic stability to those with insurance and hold down ever-escalating health-care inflation. Republicans say they have offered alternatives, such as tax credits for the purchase of insurance and malpractice-lawsuit caps.
"It's time for the president to hit the reset button and work with Republicans for better solutions, before more debt is piled on our children and more American jobs are destroyed," House Minority Leader John Boehner of Ohio said.
The president will meet Tuesday with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to talk about the speech to Congress and plan legislative strategy for the coming weeks.
The speech here, however, was more about rallying the troops that put Mr. Obama into the White House. He recounted a story he told often on the campaign trail, the origin of the "fired up, ready to go" chant. It was a low point in the campaign, he said, when Hillary Clinton led in the polls and he was exhausted, but he had promised to meet supporters in tiny Greenwood, S.C. He said he and campaign aides drove an hour and a half to a little fieldhouse with maybe 20 people inside. As he greeted attendees, he heard a loud voice behind him shout, "fired up."
He turned to find a diminutive, elderly woman in a church hat, shouting at him, "Fired up, ready to go."
"I'm thinking this woman is upstaging me," he told the crowd here, deviating from the text of his speech. But, he added, "After a minute or two, I'm feeling kind of fired up." At that point, he led the chant himself.
