WASHINGTON — With many Americans growing anxious about his plans to overhaul the nation's healthcare system, President Obama on Wednesday sought to lay out in personal terms how they stand to gain from the legislation that he has made one of the top goals of his presidency.
Obama acknowledged that the public had become skeptical of health proposals being debated in Congress, but he defended his push to move quickly on the legislation -- which aims to give more people insurance coverage and rein in rising healthcare costs.
"I'm rushed, because I get letters every day from families that are being clobbered by healthcare costs," Obama said in a prime-time news conference.
The news conference was unusual in its near-total focus on a single issue: healthcare. Foreign policy did not come up.
Obama also touched on the economic downturn and the degree to which he has run an open government. But he reserved his sharpest comments for a police case involving his friend Henry Louis Gates Jr., a Harvard professor.
Gates, who is African American, was arrested last week for disorderly conduct after police responded to a reported break-in at his rented home in Cambridge, Mass. The charges later were dropped. Obama, though acknowledging that he did not know all the facts of the incident, said in response to a reporter's question that "the Cambridge police acted stupidly in arresting somebody when there was already proof that they were in their own home."
Speaking in the East Room of the White House, the president questioned the motives of those opposed to a healthcare overhaul. Arrayed against the initiative, he said, were Republican critics determined to saddle him with a high-profile defeat that would weaken him politically.
He referred to Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.), who had said that if Obama could be stymied on healthcare, "it will break him."
"This isn't about me," the president said. "I have great health insurance, and so does every member of Congress. . . . This is about every family, every business and every taxpayer who continues to shoulder the burden of a problem that Washington has failed to solve for decades."
During much of the hourlong news conference, Obama relied on jargon that Washington insiders embrace but that might leave the typical television viewer mystified. Discussing government spending, he mentioned "the supplemental" -- referring to a war-funding bill. He used the word "incentivize" several times.
