Excerpts from the Speech

Here are some particularly choice lines:

"I am not the first President to take up this cause, but I am determined to be the last."

"Well the time for bickering is over. The time for games has passed. Now is the season for action."

"Some of people's concerns have grown out of bogus claims spread by those whose only agenda is to kill reform at any cost. The best example is the claim, made not just by radio and cable talk show hosts, but prominent politicians, that we plan to set up panels of bureaucrats with the power to kill off senior citizens. Such a charge would be laughable if it weren't so cynical and irresponsible. It is a lie, plain and simple."

"Without competition, the price of insurance goes up and the quality goes down. And it makes it easier for insurance companies to treat their customers badly . . . Insurance executives don't do this because they are bad people. They do it because it's profitable."

"Add it all up, and the plan I'm proposing will cost around $900 billion over ten years - less than we have spent on the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and less than the tax cuts for the wealthiest few Americans that Congress passed at the beginning of the previous administration. Most of these costs will be paid for with money already being spent - but spent badly - in the existing health care system. The plan will not add to our deficit."

"I will continue to seek common ground in the weeks ahead. If you come to me with a serious set of proposals, I will be there to listen. My door is always open. But know this: I will not waste time with those who have made the calculation that it's better politics to kill this plan than improve it."

"You see, our predecessors understood that government could not, and should not, solve every problem. . . . But they also understood that the danger of too much government is matched by the perils of too little . . . And they knew that when any government measure, no matter how carefully crafted or beneficial, is subject to scorn; when any efforts to help people in need are attacked as un-American; when facts and reason are thrown overboard and only timidity passes for wisdom, and we can no longer even engage in a civil conversation with each other over the things that truly matter - that at that point we don't merely lose our capacity to solve big challenges. We lose something essential about ourselves."

Ralph