Vice President Biden Pledges Support for Georgia

Jesse Lee
Jesse Lee
September 25, 2009
05:40 PM EST
With the President having just declared a major disaster in the State of Georgia as a result of severe storms and flooding, Vice President Joe Biden visited the state today to comfort local residents and survey affected areas.
"Communities like yours may have lost a lot of the physical structure, but it looks to me you've kept a lot of the grit and determination," the Vice President said at a news conference in Marietta, Ga., an Atlanta suburb. The Vice President also promised relief to the area: "We're going to have people come see you," he said. "This is not going to happen overnight. This is not going to happen tomorrow, but it's going to happen."
(Vice President Joe Biden adjusts his microphone on board an US Coast Guard Helicopter before taking off to survey flood damage in Marietta, Georgia. Official White House Photo by David Lienemann)
(Vice President Joe Biden tours a shelter at the Cobb County Civic Center and talks to families who are living in the shelter due to flooding, in Marietta, Georgia. Official White House Photo by David Lienemann)
(Vice President Joe Biden gives a statement on flood recovery outside a temporary shelter at the Cobb County Civic Center, in Marietta, Georgia. Official White House Photo by David Lienemann)
 
Related Topics: Homeland Security, Georgia

VP Biden Sets the Record Straight on Medicare

September 23, 2009 | 5:04

Travel with the Vice President as he reminds seniors that those who have always defended Medicare would never do anything to jeopardize the plan or those who rely on it. September 23, 2009 (public domain)

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Responses to Biden: "Paying more and more for less"

Jesse Lee
Jesse Lee
September 03, 2009
12:02 PM EST
This video is worth watching for the full five minutes. It's another response to Vice President Biden’s call for videos on what health reform means to you, and it puts the phrase "reality check" in a different light.
In a lot of ways the video is powerful because it's not that unique. It's not about some bizarre set of circumstances that made him fall through the cracks of insurance company bureaucracy, it's just the story of a guy who has had to go in and out of health care as his employment fortunes turned, and watched as his premiums and out-of-pocket costs just climbed and climbed.

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I just hopped over to the "What's In It For You" quiz and entered a description of this man based solely on what he discusses in the video. The results that came out are below, and again, this is based just on what he revealed – there may well be more in it for him based on things he didn’t discuss. All the more reason for you to take the quiz yourself. Also, click here to see all the video responses so far.
·         Reform will bring down costs generally and make insurance more affordable and accessible, ensuring more choices for quality coverage
·         Reform will allow you to keep the coverage you have if you want to
·         Reform will establish an insurance exchange that will provide easy one-stop shopping to compare rates and services and promote competition
·         Reform will streamline and simplify paperwork and cut the bureaucracy for you and your doctor
·         Reform will ensure you always have choices of quality, affordable health insurance no matter how often you move or change jobs
·         Reform puts a cap on what insurance companies can force you to pay in out of pocket expenses, co-pays and deductibles
·         Reform will prohibit insurance companies from dropping or watering down insurance coverage for you or your family members if you become seriously ill
·         Reform will prevent insurance companies from placing annual or lifetime caps on the coverage you receive
·         Reform will require insurance companies to renew any policy as long as the policyholder pays their premium in full
Related Topics: Health Care

Vice President Biden: 200 Days of the Recovery Act

September 3, 2009 | 1:01:55

One-hundred days ago, Vice President Joe Biden announced the "Roadmap to Recovery," a summer initiative designed to accelerate the Administration's recovery efforts. Today, at the 200-day milestone of the Recovery Act, the Vice President revealed just how we did on those commitments made at summer's beginning. September 3, 2009 (public domain)

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Responses to Biden: Peace of Mind

Jesse Lee
Jesse Lee
September 02, 2009
04:50 PM EST
Sometimes it's easy to assume that health reform is only important to people who are in immediate need of care, those who have existing medical conditions, or those who are unemployed - and indeed, even those who are satisfied with their insurance often don't know the shortcomings of what they have until that need hits.  But one of the reasons health care has been such a high priority for the American people for decades is that there's an anxiety that looms over it.  What if my premiums or co-pays continue to rise forever while my pay stays more or less the same?  What if I can't renew my insurance for some reason?  What if I lose my job, or just want to change jobs? 
In the video below, responding to Vice President Biden's call for submissions on why reform is important, Jake and Jess make their case.  As a young couple, they'd like to start planning a family, and although Jess has employer-provided health insurance, they watch as so many others around them are losing insurance and worry what would happen if for some reason they lost coverage during the duration of Jess' pregnancy for all the necessary prenatal procedures.

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"We want health care reform not so we can be irresponsible, not so some one else will pick up the tab, but so we don't have to live with the fear of losing coverage when it would be most important," says Jess.  The peace of mind Jess and Jake are searching for is what the core principles of President Obama’s Heatlh Insurance Consumer Protections are all about. As the President said in his June press conference: 
This is not just about the 47 million Americans who have no health insurance.  Reform is about every American who has ever feared that they may lose their coverage if they become too sick, or lose their job, or change their job.  It’s about every small business that has been forced to lay off employees or cut back on their coverage because it became too expensive.
Health insurance reform will restore confidence in the health care system, provide a stable, reliable system of coverage, and ultimately help families like Jess and Jake plan for a healthy, happy future.
Related Topics: Health Care

Responses to Biden: Regulation & Incentives

Jesse Lee
Jesse Lee
September 02, 2009
12:39 PM EST
There are millions of health insurance horror stories across the country, and while very few can be summed up in just a few minutes, the responses we’ve gotten to Vice President Biden’s call for videos on why reform matters to you have revealed a snapshot of what Americans go through every day.
The response below hints at a fundamental matter of incentives:

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This is actually an issue that President Obama has emphasized himself repeatedly, including in a major speech to the American Medical Association in Chicago (the whole speech is well worth watching, click through the link to see it):
There are two main reasons for this.  The first is a system of incentives where the more tests and services are provided, the more money we pay.  And a lot of people in this room know what I'm talking about.  It's a model that rewards the quantity of care rather than the quality of care; that pushes you, the doctor, to see more and more patients even if you can't spend much time with each, and gives you every incentive to order that extra MRI or EKG, even if it's not necessary.  It's a model that has taken the pursuit of medicine from a profession -- a calling -- to a business. 
That's not why you became doctors.  That's not why you put in all those hours in the Anatomy Suite or the O.R.  That's not what brings you back to a patient's bedside to check in, or makes you call a loved one of a patient to say it will be fine.  You didn't enter this profession to be bean-counters and paper-pushers.  You entered this profession to be healers.  (Applause.)  And that's what our health care system should let you be.  That's what this health care system should let you be.  (Applause.)
Now, that starts with reforming the way we compensate our providers -- doctors and hospitals. We need to bundle payments so you aren't paid for every single treatment you offer a patient with a chronic condition like diabetes, but instead paid well for how you treat the overall disease. We need to create incentives for physicians to team up, because we know that when that happens, it results in a healthier patient. We need to give doctors bonuses for good health outcomes, so we're not promoting just more treatment, but better care. 
Related Topics: Health Care

Responses to Biden: Small Businesses, and the Morality of it All

Jesse Lee
Jesse Lee
September 01, 2009
03:58 PM EST
On Monday the Vice President asked for your help in a new Reality Check – debunking the myth that health insurance reform is not needed or not important to the American people. 
We've gotten dozens and dozens of responses so far, and as you might expect even one human face of the need for health reform can speak more profoundly than charts showing the same need from millions.
This one just came in a couple hours ago. It’s one of the many reminders amongst the responses so far that a key issue in reform remains those who work hard, play by the rules, and simply can't afford health insurance. In this case we hear a small business owner who can't afford it for herself, much less her employees:

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For those who do want charts with their personal stories, read the CEA Report on how reform will help small businesses, the HHS report on how Americans have been getting less care for greater cost, or another CEA report on the dire projections for the future -- 72 million without insurance by 2040 in the absence of reform, for starters.

We're watching every submission and will continue to post some of them throughout the week.
 

Related Topics:

Joe Biden: “He Made Them More Graceful By the Way in Which he Conducted Himself”

Jesse Lee
Jesse Lee
August 26, 2009
12:40 PM EST
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The Vice President spoke with great emotion and depth this morning on the passing of his good and long-time friend Senator Kennedy. He spoke at length, and the full transcript is posted here -- read an excerpt below:
He and I were talking after his diagnosis.  And I said, I think you're the only other person I've met, who like me, is more optimistic, more enthusiastic, more idealistic, sees greater possibilities after 36 years than when we were elected.  He was 30 years-old when he was elected; I was 29 years-old.  And you'd think that would be the peak of our idealism.  But I genuinely feel more optimistic about the prospect for my country today than I did -- I have been any time in my life. 
And it was infectious when you were with him.  You could see it, those of you who knew him and those of you who didn't know him.  You could just see it in the nature of his debate, in the nature of his embrace, in the nature of how he every single day attacked these problems.  And, you know, he was never defeatist.  He never was petty -- never was petty.  He was never small.  And in the process of his doing, he made everybody he worked with bigger -- both his adversaries as well as his allies.
Don't you find it remarkable that one of the most partisan, liberal men in the last century serving in the Senate had so many of his -- so many of his foes embracing him, because they know he made them bigger, he made them more graceful by the way in which he conducted himself.
You know, he changed the circumstances of tens of millions of Americans -- in the literal sense, literally -- literally changed the circumstances.  He changed also another aspect of it as I observed about him -- he changed not only the physical circumstance, he changed how they looked at themselves and how they looked at one another.  That's a remarkable, remarkable contribution for any man or woman to make.  And for the hundreds, if not thousands, of us who got to know him personally, he actually -- how can I say it -- he altered our lives as well.
Through the grace of God and accident of history I was privileged to be one of those people and every important event in my adult life -- as I look back this morning and talking to Vicki -- every single one, he was there.  He was there to encourage, to counsel, to be empathetic, to lift up.  In 1972 I was a 29 year old kid with three weeks left to go in a campaign, him showing up at the Delaware Armory in the middle of what we called Little Italy -- who had never voted nationally by a Democrat -- I won by 3,100 votes and got 85 percent of the vote in that district, or something to that effect.  I literally would not be standing here were it not for Teddy Kennedy -- not figuratively, this is not hyperbole -- literally.
He was there -- he stood with me when my wife and daughter were killed in an accident.  He was on the phone with me literally every day in the hospital, my two children were attempting, and, God willing, thankfully survived very serious injuries.  I'd turn around and there would be some specialist from Massachusetts, a doc I never even asked for, literally sitting in the room with me.
You know, it's not just me that he affected like that -- it's hundreds upon hundreds of people.  I was talking to Vicki this morning and she said -- she said, "He was ready to go, Joe, but we were not ready to let him go."
Related Topics: Delaware, Massachusetts

Vice President Joe Biden

Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr., was born November 20, 1942, in Scranton, Pennsylvania, the first of four siblings. In 1953, the Biden family moved from Pennsylvania to Claymont, Delaware. He graduated from the University of Delaware and Syracuse Law School and served on the New Castle County Council. Then, at age 29, he became one of the youngest people ever elected to the United States Senate.

Just weeks after the election, tragedy struck the Biden family, when Biden's wife, Neilia, and their 1-year old daughter, Naomi, were killed and their two young sons critically injured in an auto accident. Vice President Biden was sworn in to the U.S. Senate at his sons' hospital bedside and began commuting to Washington every day by train, a practice he maintained throughout his career in the Senate.

In 1977, Vice President Biden married Jill Jacobs. Jill Biden, who holds a Ph.D. in Education, has been an educator for over two decades and currently teaches at a DC-area community college. The Vice President has three children: Beau, Hunter, and Ashley. Beau serves as Delaware's Attorney General and recently returned home from Iraq where he served as a Captain in the 261st Signal Brigade of the Delaware National Guard. Ashley is a social worker and Hunter is an attorney. Vice President Biden has five grandchildren: Naomi, Finnegan, Roberta Mabel ("Maisy"), Natalie, and Robert Hunter.

As a Senator from Delaware for 36 years, Senator Biden established himself as a leader on some of our nation's most important domestic and international challenges. As Chairman or Ranking Member of the Senate Judiciary Committee for 17 years, then-Senator Biden was widely recognized for his work on criminal justice issues including the landmark 1994 Crime Bill and the Violence Against Women Act. As Chairman or Ranking Member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee since 1997, then-Senator Biden played a pivotal role in shaping U.S. foreign policy. He has been at the forefront of issues and legislation related to terrorism, weapons of mass destruction, post-Cold War Europe, the Middle East, and Southwest Asia.

Now, as the 47th Vice President of the United States, Joe Biden has continued his leadership on important issues facing the nation.  The Vice President was tasked with implementing the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, helping to rebuild our economy and lay the foundation for a sustainable economic future.  As part of his continued efforts to raise the living standards of middle class Americans across the country, Vice President Biden has also focused on the issues of college affordability and American manufacturing growth, key priorities of the Administration.

Vice President Biden continues to draw on his foreign policy experience, advising the President on a multitude of international issues.  He helped secure the Senate’s approval of the New START nuclear arms reduction treaty with Russia, together with significant new funding to maintain our nuclear laboratories.  He played a lead role in ending the war in Iraq responsibly, traveling to the country eight times since being elected – most recently in December 2011 to mark the formal end of the war.

In addition, Vice President Biden has supported the Administration’s effort to reestablish leadership in the Asia Pacific, traveling to China, Japan, and Mongolia in August 2011 and completing an exchange of visits with China’s then-Vice President in February 2012, that country’s current leader.  He has represented our country in every region of the world, advancing our unprecedented support for Israel’s security, securing approval in Europe for the Administration’s more effective approach to missile defense, working with Latin American leaders to combat drug trafficking and international crime and building relations with key leaders in Africa.  He has traveled to more than two dozen countries, including Germany, Belgium, Chile, Costa Rica, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Kosovo, Lebanon, Georgia, Ukraine, Iraq, Poland, Romania, the Czech Republic, Israel, the Palestinian Territories, Jordan, Spain, Egypt, Kenya, South Africa, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Finland, Russia, Moldova, Italy, China, Mongolia, Japan, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Greece, Mexico, Honduras, Brazil, Colombia, and Trinidad and Tobago.

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Vice President Biden Announces Hospital Support for Health Reform

July 7, 2009 | 11:59

The Vice President announces an agreement with hospitals to save $150 billion in health care costs. July 7, 2009. (Public Domain)

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