In weekly address, Obama focuses on immediate benefits of health bill

"President Obama said Saturday that Americans would see immediate benefits from a landmark overhaul of the nation's health insurance system, and he urged Congress to reconcile swiftly differences on the legislation so it could be signed into law in the coming weeks," The New York Times reports. "In his weekly Saturday address, Mr. Obama highlighted elements of the plan that would take effect soon after enactment of the bill. He said people with pre-existing illnesses would be able to buy affordable insurance, children with pre-existing conditions would no longer be denied coverage and small-business owners who could not afford to cover employees would receive tax credits to buy insurance" (Zeleny, 1/9).

Obama also touted "the economic benefits of overhauling the health care system, saying that reform would help build a 'new foundation for our economy to create the good, lasting jobs and shared prosperity of tomorrow,'" Politico reports (Henderson, 1/9).

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This article was reprinted from khn.org with permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent news service, is a program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health care policy research organization unaffiliated with Kaiser Permanente.