President Obama hits campaign trail to push for health care reform

President Obama went into full campaign mode on Monday as he visited Glenside, PA to sell pending health care reform legislation. Focusing on the immediate benefits of health reform, the President tried to refocus the debate away from political gamesmanship and onto the real-life concerns of the American people.

Today's event is not the first time the President has campaigned for health reform and it probably won't be the last. With another series of votes expected in the coming weeks, the President is expected to continue the push for public support of the reform bill.

via CNN:

The administration is ramping up its health care push in the coming weeks. The White House has called for legislation to be on the president's desk at the end of March before the congressional Easter vacation.

Two Democratic leadership aides told CNN last week that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-California, is aiming to have the House of Representatives pass the Senate's health care bill by March 17.

A separate package of changes designed in part to make the overall measure more palatable to House liberals then would be approved by both chambers through a legislative maneuver known as reconciliation. Bills passed under reconciliation require a Senate majority of 51 votes. Democrats lost their filibuster-proof, 60-seat Senate supermajority with the January election of Sen. Scott Brown, R-Massachusetts.

You can read the rest of the CNN article here.

Small businesses and young adults were of particular interest at today's event. President Obama told an enthusiastic crowd that rising health care costs will ultimately damage the type of job market college-age adults will enter into if small businesses are forced to choose between hiring new employees and paying for health care.

Still, the overall theme of President Obama's campaign stop was to keep attention squarely on why he feels reform is necessary.

"[T]he insurance companies continue to ration health care based on who's sick and who's healthy; on who can pay and who can't pay. That's the status quo in America and it is a status quo that is unsustainable for this country. We can't have a system that works better for the insurance companies than it does for the American people."