President Obama slams health insurance companies, says Canadian health care "works"

By Sheldon Alberts, Washington Correspondent, Canwest News Service March 8, 2010

WASHINGTON — U.S. President Barack Obama cast America's private health insurance companies Monday as the premium-hiking villains in the nation's health-care crisis and hailed Canada's publicly funded medicare as a system that "works."

But as he embarked on a spirited and far more partisan phase of his campaign to pass landmark health-care legislation, Obama defended himself against liberal critics who feel betrayed the White House has abandoned plans to create a U.S. government-run insurance program.

"On one side of the spectrum, there were those at the beginning of this process who wanted to scrap our system of private insurance and replace it with a government-run health-care system like they have in some other countries," Obama told an audience in Glenside, Penn.

"Look, it works. It works in places like Canada, but I didn't think it was going to be practical and realistic to do it here."

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