Dr. Jon LaPook interviews President Obama

Dr. Jon LaPook, Chief medical correspondent for the CBS Evening News, interviewed President Obama on healthcare.

Dr. LaPook: Ultimately, philosophically, do you believe that each individual American should be required to have health insurance?

President Obama: I have come to that conclusion. During the campaign, I was opposed to this idea because my general attitude was the reason people don't have health insurance is not because they don't want it, but because they can't afford it. And if you make it affordable, then they will come. I've been persuaded that there are enough young uninsured people who are cheap to cover, but are opting out. To make sure that those folks are part of the overall pool is the best way to make sure that all of our premiums go down. I am now in favor of some sort of individual mandate as long as there's a hardship exemption. If somebody truly just can't afford health insurance even with the subsidies that the government is now providing, we don't want to double penalize them. We want to phase this in, in a way that we have time to make sure that coverage is actually affordable before we're saying to people "go out and get it."

Obama goes on to make some very interesting and insightful remarks on providing incentives and the right circumstances for physicians to be able to make better healthcare choices for their patients. Check it out.