Sep 20, 2009 9:50 pm US/Central
Health Care Plan Won't Increase Taxes, Obama Says
President Talks With CBS News' Bob Schieffer About Health Care, Missile Defense, Mideast Wars
WASHINGTON (CBS) ―
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President Barack Obama speaks with CBS News' Bob Schieffer, host of "Face the Nation," during an interview at the White House.
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President Barack Obama says requiring people to get health insurance and fining them if they don't would not amount to a backhanded tax increase. "I absolutely reject that notion," the president said.
Blanketing most of the Sunday TV news shows, Obama defended his proposed health care overhaul, including a key point of the various health care bills on Capitol Hill: mandating that people get health insurance to share the cost burden fairly among all. Those who failed to get coverage would face financial penalties.
Obama said other elements of the plan would make insurance affordable for people, from a new comparison-shopping "exchange" to tax credits.
Telling people to get health insurance is absolutely not a tax increase, Obama told ABC's "This Week."
"What it's saying is, is that we're not going to have other people carrying your burdens for you anymore," said Obama. "Right now everybody in America, just about, has to get auto insurance. Nobody considers that a tax increase."
Obama faces an enormous political and communications challenge in selling his health care plan as Congress debates how to pay for it all.
The president told CBS News chief Washington correspondent Bob Schieffer that, in detailing his health care proposals, he is attempting to warn Americans that the federal budget cannot sustain the current system and "a lot of Americans are going to be much worse off over time."
Schieffer asked if the president could still keep his campaign promise that there would be no additional tax on people making less than $250,000 a year, no payroll tax and no capital gains.
"I can still keep that promise," Mr. Obama said, "because … about two thirds of what we've proposed would be from money that's already in the health care system and just being spent badly."
"This is not me making wild assertions," he continued.
Obama put his support behind the idea of taxing employers that offer high-cost insurance plans.
"I do think that giving a disincentive to insurance companies to offer Cadillac plans that don't make people healthier is part of the way that we're going to bring down health care costs for everybody over the long term," Obama said on NBC's "Meet the Press."
Michelle Obama, a former hospital executive, has the brains, experience and charm to play a plausible part in helping her husband craft and sell his health care agenda. But the Obamas absorbed many lessons from the Clintons' earlier travails, and the restrained, selective use of the first lady's appeal is among them.
Some political strategists think they are hitting the mark just fine.
Targeting Mrs. Obama's involvement mainly to women "is effective, because she depoliticizes it for people," said Jennifer Palmieri, a former Clinton administration aide who closely tracks health care issues. The first lady is fully credible as a mother and wife, Palmieri said, and she speaks directly to women who make difficult health care decisions for their families but are sometimes turned off by the fiery politics surrounding the debate.
"She can lift the conversation out of the Congress," Palmieri said.
By contrast, Hillary Clinton testified before Congress about her husband's health care agenda, tying herself intimately to the rough politics that eventually sank it.
Mrs. Obama was preceded Friday by three women with emotional stories about losing health coverage while battling cancer and other challenges.
"The status quo is unacceptable," the first lady said in her remarks. "It is holding women and families back."
Obama's network interviews were taped Friday at the White House. He became the first president to appear on five Sunday network shows in the same morning, an extraordinary effort to build public support for his top domestic priority.
The goal is expand and improve health insurance coverage and rein in long-term costs.
Yet despite so many weeks of speeches, town halls and interviews, Obama said he has found it difficult at times to make a complex topic clear and relevant.
"I've tried to keep it digestible," Obama said. "It's very hard for people to get their arms around it. And that's been a case where I have been humbled and I just keep on trying harder."
Obama told Univision's "Al Punto" ("To the Point") that the strong opposition to his plan is part of a political strategy.
"Well, part of it is ... that the opposition has made a decision," he said. "They are just not going to support anything, for political reasons."
(© 2010 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)
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