After urging Congress to schedule a final vote on health care reform last week, President Obama continued his campaign to garner support for reform with a speech on Monday at Arcadia University in Glenside, PA. Also attending the speech were Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius, Governor Edward Rendell, Senator Arlen Specter (D-PA), and Representatives Chaka Fattah (D-PA), Allyson Schwartz (D-PA), and Joe Sestak (D-PA).

"The United States Congress owes the American people a final, up or down vote on health care," the president told the audience at Arcadia. "It's time to make a decision. The time for talk is over. We need to see where people stand. And we need all of you to help us win that vote. So I need you to knock on doors. Talk to your neighbors. Pick up the phone. When you hear an argument by the water cooler and somebody is saying this or that about it, say, no, no, no, no, hold on a second. And we need you to make your voices heard all the way in Washington, D.C."

Deputy Press Secretary Bill Burton explained on Monday that the President's travels and speeches in Pennsylvania and in St. Louis, MO, on Wednesday were to "make the stakes of this issue very clear to the American people...the President is going to talk about the urgency of getting something done right now and hopefully get across what a lot of us have known for a long time, which is that health insurance companies have made the decision that even with rising health care costs and pricing people out of health care, they can still make more money by increasing their rates than they can by keeping people on the rolls."

The White House Web site has a related feature, "Health Reform by the Numbers, an online campaign using figures to raise awareness about the urgency of reform. The first number the campaign features is $1,115, the amount of the average monthly premium for employer-sponsored family coverage per month in 2009.

However, the opposition to the reform legislation has not backed down. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) stated on the Senate floor Monday: "The administration recognizes the weakness of its argument. That's why it's trying to create a sense of inevitability about this bill. Once again, it's imposing an artificial deadline to put pressure on members. It's talking about how we're in the middle of the final chapter of this debate. The administration wants members to believe they're characters in a screenplay, and that the ending of this play is already written. This is an illusion. House members aren't buying these arguments anymore. In fact, many of them are already walking off the set. And my guess is that a lot more of them are about to."

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