Obama has not read health bill

Congress passed the cap and trade energy bill and NOBODY read the bill. Do you really believe Obama when he promises to reduce health care costs and add 15-40 million to the roles? The American public is too smart for that kind of double talk. Remember – if you don’t speak up — and do read the bill — then you are part of the problem. Complacency can kill a democracy.

August is the month to contact your congress representatives and say what you think.

Sam Farr meets August 10 6pm in Monterey at 409 Pierce Street at Monterey Institute of International Studies, Irvine Auditorium. Sam Farr is in Santa Cruz Aug. 12 at the First Congregational Church at 900 High Street, 6 pm. And he is in in Hollister at the San Benito County Board of Supervisors Chambers at 481 Fourth St., Hollister, CA

Obama Health Plan Draws Majority Disapproval in Poll

By Kristin Jensen

Aug. 5 (Bloomberg) — President Barack Obama’s effort to revamp the U.S. health-care system is drawing increasing disapproval from Americans worried about higher deficits, a Quinnipiac University poll shows.

The July 27-Aug. 3 poll found that 52 percent of American voters disapprove of the way Obama is handling the health-care issue and 39 percent approve. That’s a switch from the 46 percent who approved and 42 percent who disapproved in late June, the university’s polling institute said.

Almost three-quarters of the respondents said they don’t believe Obama’s promise that Congress can pass a health-care measure without adding to the budget deficit. And 57 percent say the legislation should be dropped if it adds “significantly” to the deficit, Quinnipiac said.

“It’s obviously a problem for the people who are trying to push health-care reform,” said Peter Brown, assistant director of the Hamden, Connecticut-based polling institute, in an interview with Bloomberg Television. “The White House and Democratic leadership are very concerned that the month of August not become the time when the plan died.”

The House of Representatives left Washington on July 31 for a five-week recess after putting off a vote on legislation until September. One of the two Senate committees with jurisdiction over health care is still struggling to craft bipartisan legislation, and the Senate also gave up on meeting Obama’s goal of passing the measure in August.

Persuading Voters

House and Senate lawmakers are grappling with issues such as whether to create a government-run health-care plan that would compete with private insurers, whether to mandate that employers offer health insurance to their workers, and how to pay for a plan that may cost $1 trillion over 10 years.

House Democrats are now trying to persuade voters in their home districts that the effort to cover millions of uninsured Americans and reduce health-care costs is worthwhile; the poll suggests they have a lot of work to do.

“The average voter out there is skeptical about government,” Brown told reporters in Washington today.

Affecting Care

A plurality of 39 percent of respondents said they don’t think proposed changes would affect their own care, while 36 percent said the legislation would hurt the quality of their care and 21 percent said they would expect an improvement. Almost three-fifths say Congress shouldn’t pass a health-care measure unless it receives at least some Republican support.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs yesterday accused a group opposing the health-care overhaul plan of disrupting town-hall meetings convened by Democratic lawmakers by “manufacturing” outrage.

Leaders of Conservatives for Patients’ Rights, which has staged rallies against Obama’s health-care plan, “have bragged about organizing and manufacturing” anger expressed at the public meetings, Gibbs told reporters.

Richard Scott, the group’s chairman, said in a statement that “no one needs to manufacture anger or concern” because the American public “is threatened by a massive government takeover” of health care.

Some Approval

As other recent polls have shown, Quinnipiac found support for individual elements of the plans that Obama and Democratic leaders in Congress are proposing, even amid some disapproval.

The Quinnipiac poll showed that 62 percent of voters favor allowing Americans to opt into a government-run insurance program, compared with 32 percent who don’t. Three out of five respondents support subsidies to help lower-income Americans buy insurance, 61 percent support higher taxes on the wealthiest Americans to pay for the overhaul and 54 percent agree that employers should provide insurance or pay a penalty.

A requirement that individuals obtain insurance drew fire from respondents, with 68 percent opposed and 26 percent in favor. All the plans so far have some sort of mandate on Americans to obtain coverage, with help for those with lower incomes.

The poll included 2,409 registered voters nationwide and has a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points.

To contact the reporter on this story: Kristin Jensen in Washington at kjensen@bloomberg.net