Obama Takes Center Stage in Healthcare Debate

A woman holds a sign as President Barack Obama shakes hands after speaking at a town hall meeting at Portsmouth High School in Portsmouth, New Hampshire on August 11.

With Congress in recess, heated debate over the Obama administration's healthcare reform plan continues to move from Capitol Hill to town hall meetings nationwide.

President Barack Obama took aim at the health insurance industry today and tried to dispel fears that passing his plan would place America's healthcare entirely in the hands of the government.

"Under the reform we're proposing, if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor. If you like your healthcare plan, you can keep your healthcare plan," Obama said at a town hall meeting in Portsmouth, N.H. "I don't think government bureaucrats should be meddling, but I also don't think insurance company bureaucrats should be meddling."

Obama was addressing residents of a state where 89 percent of the population has health insurance. "Where we disagree, let's disagree over things that are real, not wild misrepresentations that don't bear any resemblance to anything that's actually being proposed," he said.

Obama's remarks came as angry protests have been turning town hall meetings into rowdy shouting matches and have put many lawmakers on the defensive. He called for "serious debate" on healthcare and accused critics of creating "bogeymen" to "scare and mislead the American people."

The president talked about the assertion that his plan would create "death panels" to determine end-of-life healthcare choices, a reference to a Facebook post by former Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin.

His plan would not "pull the plug on Grandma because we've decided that it's too expensive to let her live anymore," Obama said.

There were no outbursts during the meeting.

This morning, Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania was the latest Democrat to face a hostile crowd at a town hall meeting. The audience in Lebanon, Pa., began booing the senator even before the question-and-answer session began.

A man who had not been selected to speak walked into the aisle and started yelling at Specter as he was trying to respond to a question about whether Americans would be able to keep their private insurance under the proposed healthcare plan.

Specter shouted into the microphone repeatedly that if the man wanted to leave he could. The man was escorted out.

Rep. Gwen Moore, a Wisconsin Democrat, held a town hall meeting on healthcare in Milwaukee today, and Sen. Claire McCaskill, a Democrat from Missouri, convened one in Hillsboro, Mo.

Obama is expected to continue discussion about his proposed healthcare overhaul this Friday in Bozeman, Mont. He then plans to travel to Grand Junction, Colo., to talk about protections against high out-of-pocket costs for the insured.

• See photos of healthcare town hall meetings.
• See photos of Obama behind the scenes.
• See a gallery of political cartoons. 
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