Obama Defends Senate Health Care Bill, Says It Will Pass

President Obama pushed back against critics, including the former head of the Democratic Party, who have said that the health care bill in the Senate is fatally flawed and should be scrapped altogether.
In an interview with ABC News' Charles Gibson, the president said he laid out for Congress specific things he wanted to see in the health care legislation -- including providing insurance for millions of uninsured and not driving up the deficit -- and that the current bill still has those benefits.
"Now, if you can tell me that those things are not worth it, then you and I have a very different opinion about what the task is here," he said.
But Dr. Howard Dean, former Democratic National Committee chairman and a medical doctor, charged this week that the Senate bill has been so watered down that it is no longer worth supporting.
There is a bit of irony in that just 10 days after announcing the deployment of 30,000 more American troops to Afghanistan, President Obama will accept the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize Thursday in Oslo, Norway.
The award, which the Nobel committee said was for Obama's "extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples," comes as he presides over wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and faces an American public that is increasingly skeptical about the U.S.-led efforts there.
Obama will walk a delicate line in his acceptance speech, and the White House said he will acknowledge that he accepts the peace prize as a war president.
Aides said he will address Afghanistan and the decision to add troops there and present it in the overall context of the award he is accepting. Senior administration officials said that Obama will discuss what the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq mean in the context of peace and his role as president and the role of the United States.
-ABC News-