Obama’s Second Inaugural Address

Affirms Commitment to Preserving Medicare and Medicaid While Lowering Health Care Costs

In his second inaugural address on Monday, President Barack Obama delivered an impassioned call for equality of opportunity for all Americans. He asked Americans to “recall that what binds this nation together is not the colors of our skin or the tenets of our faith or the origins of our names.” He said that what makes us exceptional is our allegiance to the idea that “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by the Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.”

Obama described Americans as continuing on a never ending journey to bridge the meaning of those words with the realities of our time. “Together,” he said, “we resolved that a great nation must care for the vulnerable, and protect its people from life’s worst hazards and misfortune.” He said we celebrate initiative and enterprise and insist on hard work and personal responsibility. “When times change,” he said, “so must we; that fidelity to our founding principles requires new responses to new challenges; that preserving our individual freedoms requires collective action.”

He cautioned that outworn programs are inadequate to the needs of our time. “We must harness new ideas and technology to remake our government, revamp our tax code, reform our schools, and empower our citizens with the skills they need to work harder, learn more, and reach higher.”

He asserted that Americans still believe that every citizen deserves a basic measure of security and dignity. “We must make the hard choices to reduce the cost of health care and the size of the deficit,” he said. “But we reject the belief that America must choose between caring for the generation that built this country and investing in the generation that will build its future. For we remember the lessons of our past, when twilight years were spent in poverty, and parents of a child with a disability had nowhere to turn.”

He gave a stirring defense of America’s safety net programs: “The commitments we make to each other—through Medicare, and Medicaid, and Social Security—these things do not sap our initiative; they strengthen us. They do not make us a nation of takers; they free us to take risks that make this country great.”

He affirmed the importance of technology in shaping our future. “We cannot cede to other nations,” he said, “the technology that will power new jobs and new industries—we must claim its promise. That is how we maintain our economic vitality and our national treasure.”

He cited a series of steps this country must take on its journey to make the American values of “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness” real for every American, ending with an emotional call for Americans to ensure that “all our children, from the streets of Detroit to the hills of Appalachia to the quiet lanes of Newtown, know that they are care for, and cherished, and always safe from harm.”

In recognition of Martin Luther King Day, he called on Americans to remember those who “left footprints along this great Mall, to hear a preacher say that we cannot walk alone; to hear a King proclaim that our individual freedom is inextricably bound to the freedom of every soul on Earth.”

He concluded with a call to act without delay. “Let each of us now embrace, with solemn duty and awesome joy, what is our lasting birthright. With common effort and common purpose, with passion and dedication, let us answer the call of history, and carry into an uncertain future that precious light of freedom.”

The inauguration speech was strong on policy while balanced with inspiration, hope, and confidence in the American spirit. The President’s initial policy area referenced was health, particularly Medicare and Medicaid. That signals his immediate priorities as he begins his second term working with a diverse Congress that, to date has fallen short of reaching agreement on entitlement reform. The President clearly set out the challenge of taming rising health care costs while standing strong on his commitment to protecting the vulnerable and infirm who depend on these programs.

“The home care and hospice community stands ready to work with the President to bring necessary solutions in health care combined with a strengthened commitment to those citizens we need to protect. We can get there together. We can help with home care and hospice as proven solutions,” stated Val. J. Halamandaris, president of the National Association for Home Care & Hospice. Halamandaris, along with NAHC Chair Andrea DeVoti, attended the inauguration ceremony.

In celebrating achievements in civil rights, Obama said that while great progress has been made, ‘the journey is not yet complete.” “Health care is the last, great civil rights battle, and home care should be a right. We look forward to working with the President and the Congress to complete the journey of making home care accessible to all,” stated Halamandaris.

Early 2013 will bring several very matters forward in health care policy. Upcoming is the State of the Union address by the President, now scheduled for February 12. The White House will soon issue it annual budget as well. Congress will begin crafting a budget in the House and Senate while facing the early challenges of the debt ceiling, sequestration, and deficit reduction. As highlighted by the President’s speech today, health care promises to be at the center of all of those events.