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PORTLAND — Nearly 2,500 people crowded into the Portland Expo Center on Thursday to hear President Barack Obama speak on the recent passage of the health insurance reform bill.
The stop in Maine was part of a nationwide tour by the president to promote the health care law, a victory for Democrats after a hard-fought battle in Congress and town halls around the country.
During his speech, Obama took a jab at his detractors in Congress who intend to repeal portions of the law, if not the entire bill.
“If they want to have a fight, I welcome that fight,” Obama said. “Because I don’t think the American people are going to put the insurance industry back in the driver’s seat.”
“We’ve already been there. We know what that’s like. We’re not going back. We’re ready to move forward,” Obama said.
Obama also replied to a claim he said he heard in the capitol that his signing the bill would be “the end of freedom as we know it.”
“After I signed the bill, I looked around,” Obama said. “I looked up at the sky to see if asteroids were falling. I looked down at the ground to see if cracks had opened up in the earth. Turned out, it was a pretty nice day.”
“No one had lost their doctor,” Obama continued. “Nobody had pulled the plug on granny. No one was being dragged away and forced into some government-run health care plan.”
“Maine is kind of a backdrop for this conversation he’s having with the whole country about health care,” said Rep. Chellie Pingree, D-Maine. “When you have a contentious debate like this, there are myths, there are sound bites, there’s a lot that gets out there and it takes a little to get back to understanding what’s in this bill.”
To those ends, Obama assumed a professorial tone, casually explaining the contents of the health insurance reform package. He touted the short-term effects of the health care legislation, as well as the provisions he said would benefit small-business owners.
The president said that starting this year, small-business owners will be eligible for a tax credit to help them cover the cost of their employees’ health insurance, and that effective immediately, Americans with pre-existing conditions will be able to gain coverage, and won’t be dropped when they get sick. He also said young people are now allowed to stay on their parents’ health insurance plan until they are 26 years old.
The bill signed by Obama on March 30 also included a provision, the Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act, that the president said would benefit students.
SAFRA provides “an additional $68 billion that used to go to banks and financial services companies, and now that is going to go to the student loan program and make sure college is affordable for every young person in America,” Obama said. He also said the provision would ensure that students never pay more than 10 percent of their income to student loan repayments.
“The speech really cleared up a lot of things in my head,” said Lizzie Tangney of Saco after the speech. “It was good how he explained the bill to everyone.”
Outside the Expo, a crowd of protesters gathered both among Obama supporters and across the street.
“We’re afraid of what’s going to happen to our children and our grandchildren,” said Frank Giodano of Newport, dressed in an American flag shirt, holding a sign proclaiming “Obama and Congress are traitors to our Constitution.”
Protesters said the passage of the health care reform bill would spell victory for Republicans in the 2010 midterm elections, spurred by a resentment of the Democrat’s unilateral push on health care.
“The midterm elections are always challenging for presidents” said Shelby Wright, Northern Maine regional field director for Organizing for America, the community organizing group that organizes around the president’s agenda.
“I think that once people become more educated about what’s in the health insurance bill, the tides of frustration and opposition are going to change for the better,” Wright said.
Tarren Bragdon, CEO of the Maine Heritage Policy Center, a conservative think tank, said Mainers will not be happy with the effect the new law will have on their health insurance.
“Here in Maine, we’ve seen what happens with big government health care,” Bragdon said in reference to DirigoChoice, Maine’s state-subsidized health insurance plan. “You have higher private health insurance costs, you have fewer choices and higher taxes. We’ve lived the big-government health care dream here in Maine and we’ve seen how the story ends.”
Obama said the plan put forward by congressional Republicans was to deregulate the insurance markets, calling it the “foxes-running-the-chicken-coop health insurance plan.” He called the health reform law a “middle of the road solution” to America’s broken health insurance system.
Responding to mixed approval of the reform package in the week following its passage, Obama said Americans should wait and see the effects of the new law before judging the reform effort.
“It’s only been a week,” Obama said. “Before we look around and see if people like health insurance reform, we should wait to see what happens when we put it into place.”
Ben Goodman, president of Maine College Democrats and member of the University of Maine System board of trustees, attended the event.
“In September 2007, I sat behind [Obama] in the Expo,” Goodman said. “He was down in the polls, he had a cold and he didn’t seem like he had the momentum. Today I was in the front row, right up against it, and Barack Obama is back.”
“I think the president is the best spokesman, especially about the importance of health care reform,” said Gov. John Baldacci. “It’s important that he’s going out and giving the message, talking about the benefits.”
Bangor Daily News