Obama to give speech on financial crisis Monday

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama will give a speech about the financial crisis on Monday in New York, marking the anniversary of the collapse of Lehman Brothers, the White House said on Thursday.

The fall of Lehman last year triggered a worldwide financial crisis and accelerated Obama's race to the presidency as the Democrat's cool reaction to the country's economic problems contrasted with a more scattered response from his Republican opponent, Senator John McCain.

Obama made financial regulatory reform a key platform of his candidacy and is trying to push through Congress legislative measures on the issue as president.

"He will discuss the aggressive steps the administration has taken to bring the economy back from the brink (and) the commitment to winding down the government's role in the financial sector," the White House said in a statement about the speech.

Actions the United States and other nations around the world must take to prevent "a crisis like this from ever happening again" would also feature in the speech, the statement said.

Lehman, once the fourth-largest U.S. investment bank, filed for bankruptcy protection on September 15, 2008, in the largest U.S. bankruptcy filing in history.

Obama's speech will take place at midday in New York City's Federal Hall.

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Health finance reform needed

The behavior of opponents of health reform is completely embarrassing and also seems to miss the main point -- our current system of financing health care in this country is completely unsustainable.

With the increases of between 10 and 20 percent annually for private insurance coverage, eventually all small businesses will have to stop subsidizing employee health insurance. Already many companies, large and small, are in effect reducing employees' wages by increasing the amount each must contribute for health insurance -- a process that will only increase over time and harm the average American's standard of living.

Meanwhile, those without insurance often use emergency rooms for their care and end up with hospital bills that they can't pay and therefore harm their credit or end up in bankruptcy. Then the cost of uncompensated care is passed on to those with insurance.

Our public health insurance system is also a mess. Medicaid seems to be chronically underfunded, resulting in large numbers of providers refusing to accept Medicaid coverage. Medicare reimbursements reportedly are also insufficient, yet the expenses of Medicare continues to rise and, with the upcoming spike in the 65 and over population, will bankrupt our federal government by about 2020 without more cost controls being put in place.

Solving these problems is far from easy, or else solutions would have been enacted long ago -- but the status quo is not acceptable. Rather than ranting and raving, the opponents attending town hall meetings should discuss constructive suggestions to these problems. All Americans need to have access to decent, affordable health care, and those Americans with the means (and desire) to pay for "premium" health care services should be free to spend in that manner.

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