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President Obama Defends Right To Choose Healthcare
President Defends Right To Choose Best Care
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Story Updated: Jun 24, 2009
(ABC News) President Obama struggled to explain Wednesday whether his health care reform proposals would force normal Americans to make sacrifices that wealthier, more powerful people -- like the president himself -- wouldn't face.
Obama on how to drive down health care costs while providing adequate coverage.The probing questions came from two skeptical neurologists during ABC News' special on health care reform, "Questions for the President: Prescription for America," anchored from the White House by Diane Sawyer and Charles Gibson.
Dr. Orrin Devinsky, a neurologist and researcher at the New York University Langone Medical Center, said that elites often propose health care solutions that limit options for the general public, secure in the knowledge that if they or their loves ones get sick they will be able to afford the best care available, even if it's not provided by insurance.
Devinsky asked the president pointedly if he would be willing to promise that he wouldn't seek such extraordinary help for his wife or daughters if they became sick and the public plan he's proposing limited the tests or treatment they can get.
The president refused to make such a pledge, though he allowed that if "it's my family member, if it's my wife, if it's my children, if it's my grandmother I always want them to get the very best care."
"There's a whole bunch of care that's being provided that every study, that every bit of evidence that we have indicates may not be making us healthier," he said.
Gibson interjected that often patients don't know what will work until they get every test they can.
"Often times we know what makes sense and what doesn't," the president responded, making a push for evidence-based medicine.
