Obama Iowa City

Just a few months into our campaign, I stood at the University of Iowa hospital right around the corner and I promised that by the end of my first term in office, I would sign legislation to reform our health insurance system. It began when people had the courage to stand up in town hall meetings and talk about how insurance companies were denying their families coverage because of a preexisting condition. It began when countless small business owners and families and doctors shared stories about a health care system that works better for the insurance industry than it does for the American people.
Of course -- of course, over the last year, there's been a lot of misinformation spread about health care reform. Leaders of the Republican Party, they called the passage of this bill Armageddon. People still have their doctors. This year, millions of small business owners will be eligible for tax credits that will help them cover the cost of insurance for their employees. This year, millions of small businesses will benefit.
You like your plan? You'll be keeping your plan. The days of the insurance industry running roughshod over the American people are over. If you can't afford insurance right now or if you've been denied coverage -- and I'll bet there are some folks here who don't have insurance or can't afford it or have been denied coverage -- you're going to finally be able to get it. We'll start reducing the waste in the system, from unnecessary tests to unwarranted insurance subsidies.
This health care tax credit is pro-jobs, it is pro-business, and it starts this year, and it's starting because of you. This year, insurance companies will no longer be able to drop people's coverage when they get sick, or place lifetime limits or restrictive annual limits on the amount of care they can receive. This year, all new insurance plans will be required to offer free preventive care. Today, the preventive care she needs will finally be covered without charge. That's what this reform will do. So you will be able to get the same good deal that they're getting, because if you're paying their salary, you should have health insurance that's at least as good as theirs.
It doesn't do everything that everybody wants, but it moves us in the direction of universal health care coverage in this country and that's why everybody here fought so hard for it. Because I don't believe that the American people are going to put the insurance industry back in the driver's seat. This country is moving forward. With the health-care victory in hand, the president will also be free to pursue his foreign policy goals. The agreement is a key step toward Obama's campaign promise of a world without nuclear weapons.
Obama's appearance here was his first outside Washington since he signed health-care legislation into law, perhaps his most important domestic achievement since taking office 14 months ago. Interrupted often by applause, Obama evoked some of the same populist themes he used in the weeks leading up to the health-care vote. Obama won Iowa in 2008, but the political climate here has turned sharply against Democrats amid rising unemployment and anti-Washington sentiment.
As a long-shot presidential candidate nearly three years ago, Obama came to Iowa City to outline his proposal for health care, an issue that at the time appeared to belong to his rival for the Democratic nomination, Hillary Rodham Clinton. Far behind in opinion polls, Obama brashly promised to secure reform legislation in his first term.
This historic change did not begin in Washington. The latter was a reference to a deep divide in Congress over the best way to provide insurance coverage without federally funding abortions. Liberal Democrats favored the creation of a government-run insurance option to compete with policies offered by private companies, but the Senate would not support it.