http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2008/02/09/prepared_remarks_of_senator_barack_obama/We are tired of being disappointed by our politics. We are tired of being let down. We’re tired of hearing promises made and ten-point plans proposed in the heat of a campaign only to have nothing change when everyone goes back to Washington. Because the lobbyists just write another check. Or because politicians start worrying about how they’ll win the next election instead of why they should. Or because they focus on who’s up and who’s down instead of who matters.
And while Washington is consumed with the same drama and division and distraction, another family puts up a For Sale sign in the front yard. Another factory shuts its doors forever. Another mother declares bankruptcy because she cannot pay her child’s medical bills.
And another soldier waves goodbye as he leaves on another tour of duty in a war that should’ve never been authorized and never been waged. It goes on and on and on, year after year after year.
But in this election – at this moment – Americans are standing up all across the country to say, not this time. Not this year. The stakes are too high and the challenges too great to play the same Washington game with the same Washington players and expect a different result.....
....And when I am President, we’ll pass universal health care not in twenty years, not in ten years, but by the end of my first term in office. But you don’t have to take my word for it. Senator Ted Kennedy recently said that he wouldn’t have endorsed me if he didn’t believe passionately that I will fight for universal health care as President. And if there’s someone who knows something about health care, it’s Ted Kennedy.
My plan would bring down premiums for the typical family by $2500 a year. We’d ban insurance companies from denying you coverage because of a pre-existing condition. We’d allow every American to get the same kind of health care that members of Congress get for themselves. And the one difference between my plan and Senator Clinton’s plan is that she said she’d ‘go after’ your wages if you don’t buy health care. Well I believe the reason people don’t have health care isn’t because no one’s forced them to buy it, it’s because no one’s made it affordable – and that’s why we bring down the cost of health care more than any other plan in this race.
:cry: :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry:
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