US President Barack Obama says that he “wants to get something done this year” about health care reform, and will address Congress in a major speech 9 September to clarifiy his ideas about the best way to move forward. He promises to “make sure that Democrats and Republicans understand that I’m open to new ideas, that we’re not being rigid and ideological about this thing, but we do intend to get something done this year”, he said in an ABC news interview 8 September.
Health care reform has been bogged down in both houses of Congress, where Obama’s Democrats have solid majorities, by recalcitrance on a “public option”, a public health insurance system alongside the private system.
Newt Gingrich, former Republican speaker of the House in the 1990s says in an interview 8 September with NPR, that his advice to Obama is to break health care reform up into five or seven manageable bills, each addressing a separate issue. “I think if they would take — and this is what I suggested to Mrs. Clinton (in 1993, when Hilary Clinton tried to introduce health care reform, ed. note)— if they would take five to seven smaller bills, take one on litigation reform to lower the cost of defensive medicine and to save billions of dollars; take one on fixing Medicare and Medicaid so we are not paying billions to crooks who are not delivering services; have one on prevention and wellness; have one on better practices. You could pass five to seven bills and, collectively, they would add up to an enormous amount of change.” BBC, NPR, Reuters
US vice president Joe Biden told ABC television Sunday 5 July that the US could not restrain Israel from taking military action if it felt threatened by a nuclear build-up in Iran. Biden has just returned from a Middle East trip. Israeli prime minister Benyamin Netanyahu has warned that Israel will not allow Tehran to acquire nuclear weapons. Israel bombed a nuclear reactor in Iraq in 1981. The Sunday Times of London reported 5 July that secret talks between Israel and Saudi Arabia raised the possibility that Israel would not be hindered if it flew through Saudi airspace on its way to Iran. BBC, Reuters
