Obama tries to put a face on the health-care debate

GRAND JUNCTION, Colo. — As President Obama wages his campaign to sell Americans on the need for overhauling health care, he is using a familiar tactic: trying to make the political personal by putting a human face on a complicated and sometimes abstract debate.

At a town-hall-style meeting in the Central High School gymnasium in Grand Junction on Saturday, Obama was introduced by Nathan Wilkes, whose family nearly lost health coverage after costs to care for his 6-year-old son, Thomas, who has hemophilia, approached the $1 million lifetime policy cap.

On Friday, in Belgrade, Mont., Obama was introduced by Katie Gibson, who was dropped by her insurer after she received a cancer diagnosis. On Tuesday, in Portsmouth, N.H., Lori Hitchcock introduced the president; she cannot find insurance, she said, because she has a pre-existing condition.

"If you think that can't happen to you and your family, think again," Obama said Saturday on the second day of a swing through the Western states that included quick side trips for vacation time. "This is part of the larger story, of folks with insurance paying more and more out of pocket."

Obama used each of these families to make the case that, if his proposed overhaul goes through, insurers will be barred from imposing lifetime caps, dropping patients and refusing care for pre-existing conditions. On Saturday, he added a personal story of his own, citing the death of his grandmother to push back against unsubstantiated claims that he wants to establish government "death panels" that would deny care to elderly patients.

"I just lost my grandmother last year; I know what it's like to watch somebody you love who's aging deteriorate, and have to struggle with that," Obama said. "So the notion that somehow I ran for public office, or members of Congress are in this, so they can go around pulling the plug on Grandma? When you start making arguments like that, that's simply dishonest."

The personal stories, however, also illustrate the difficult task the administration and Congress face in convincing Americans major change is necessary.

An estimated 80 percent of Americans already have insurance, and Obama must persuade them that overhauling the system will make it work better for them and for the millions who stand to gain from an expansion of coverage.

He is facing increasing skepticism from conservatives and some independents, who question how he will pay for the overhaul and whether its central component — a "public option" to compete with private insurers — will prod employers to stop offering private coverage, pushing people who are already insured into a government plan.

Obama's ability to reclaim the health-care debate may depend in part on whether he can use his platform to rise above the din. As congressional town-hall meetings have turned raucous, with protests and shouting matches, Obama is trying to tamp down the anger, by criticizing the media and calling on Americans to "lower our voices," as he said Saturday in his weekly address.

"You know how TV loves a ruckus," Obama said in the address, reprising a line he has been using in the town-hall sessions. "But what you haven't seen — because it's not as exciting — are the many constructive meetings going on all over the country."

Obama's meetings have been among the constructive ones. While White House officials said most of the 1,700 tickets to the event Saturday were distributed randomly to people who signed up over the Internet, many were given out through local elected officials who are Democrats.

That was the case in Montana, too. The resulting crowds were largely supportive of Obama.

Even so, the president was twice challenged Saturday over a central component of his plan: its call for a government-sponsored public option that would compete with the private sector.

When University of Colorado student Zach Lahn asked how private companies could possibly compete with the government, Obama conceded it was a point for "legitimate debate," though he argued there is ample precedent for the private sector to compete successfully with the government, citing the Postal Service as an example.

"The notion that somehow just by having a public option you have the entire private marketplace destroyed, is just not borne out by the facts," Obama said, adding that "UPS and FedEx are doing a lot better than the Post Office."

In introducing the president, Wilkes fought back tears as he described the birth of his son in 2003, and the first question the doctor asked: "Do you have good insurance?"

Wilkes told of how he "searched frantically" for a new policy when his son neared the $1 million cap, and how a social worker suggested he and his wife divorce, so their son might qualify for Medicaid. Eventually they found coverage, with a $6 million cap.

"When you hear about these experiences, when you think of the millions of people denied coverage because of pre-existing conditions, the thousands who have their policies canceled because of illness, the countless folks like Nathan, I want you to remember one thing," Obama said. "There but for the grace of God go I."

Material from the Los Angeles Times is included in this report.