Insurance Space

President Barack Obama said the health-care legislation he anticipates signing this year will have an immediate impact by expanding coverage to the uninsured and requiring insurers to accept customers regardless of pre- existing conditions.

In his weekly radio and Internet address, Obama said the measure making its way through Congress would build a new foundation for economic growth by reining in health-care costs and making affordable health care more available.

While many of the changes won’t take place for several years, “there are dozens of protections and benefits that will take effect this year,” he said.

“Once I sign health insurance reform into law, doctors and patients will have more control over their health-care decisions, and insurance company bureaucrats will have less,” Obama said. “These changes represent the most sweeping reforms and toughest restrictions on insurance companies that this country has ever known.”

Talks between the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate are at a preliminary stage as lawmakers negotiate on the differences between health-care legislation approved by each chamber last year. Financing the expansion of insurance coverage to more than 90 percent of Americans looms as a major unresolved issue.

“After a long and thorough debate, we are on the verge of passing health insurance reform,” Obama said.

Jobs Issue

Obama also addressed yesterday’s report from the Labor Department that the U.S. unexpectedly shed 85,000 jobs in December. About half of the 7.2 million job losses over the past two years have occurred since Obama took office in January 2009. The unemployment rate remained at 10 percent last month.

“Until we see a trend of good, sustainable job creation, we will be relentless in our efforts to put America back to work,” Obama said.

Obama yesterday highlighted the awarding of $2.3 billion in tax credits intended to boost clean-energy jobs. He also said the government must “explore every avenue” to encourage job growth. The tax credits were part of stimulus program Congress enacted last February, and they will go to 183 companies, including PPG Industries Inc. and Itron Inc., for clean-energy manufacturing projects in 43 states. The projects getting the tax credit are forecast to create more than 17,000 jobs.

Republican Address

In the Republican address, Representative Peter King of New York said the Dec. 25 attempted attack on an airliner bound from Detroit reminds America of the terrorist threat and that the nation must do more to prevent terrorists from entering the country.

“This is about whether we’ve learned our lesson,” said King, the senior Republican on the House Homeland Security Committee.

Obama ordered a review of U.S. intelligence and aviation security policies after Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a 23-year-old Nigerian, allegedly smuggled explosives aboard a Northwest Airlines flight and tried to detonate them as the plane neared its landing.

The aircraft carried 290 people. Abdulmutallab yesterday pleaded not guilty to U.S. criminal charges.

King said Congress needs to pass legislation that would prevent suspected terrorists from being brought to trial in the U.S. or moved to prisons on U.S. soil. He and other Republicans oppose the president’s plan to close the prison at a U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and the administration’s decision to try accused Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in court in New York.

King said terrorists should be treated as war criminals, and not granted the rights given criminal defendants in the U.S. court sysyem.

“We’re a nation at war, and we should act like it,’ he said.

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Tags: Health insurance