President Barack Obama Sunday night in an appearance on CBS' 60 Minutes said that some Republicans just want to "kill" health care reform and that he'll "own" the bill when it passes.
"'You know, I intend to be president for a while and once bill passes, I own it. And if people look and say, 'You know what? This hasn't reduced my costs. My premiums are still going up 25 percent, insurance companies are still jerking me around,' I'm the one who's going to be held responsible.'"
Obama went on to say: "The problem I've got is that the only way I can get medium and long-term federal spending under control is if we do something about health care. Ironically, health care reform is critical to deficit reduction. I know it seems counterintuitive, 'cause people say, 'Well, if we're spending more money on people who currently don't have health insurance, and we're giving credits to small businesses, and we're doing all these things, that's costing money. How can this be good for us?' The biggest problem we have in our budget, as much as we've spent this year on crisis response, the biggest long-term problem we have - and everybody agrees with this - is the rising cost of Medicare and Medicaid'" (Kroft, 9/13). CBS included a video of the entire segment.
Other news outlets covered the President's interview and related issues.