Thousands attend Obama's Minnesota health care rally

MINNEAPOLIS — Thousands of roaring supporters turned out Saturday to rally behind President Barack Obama's call to overhaul the nation's health care system, packing a basketball arena here as Obama warned that nearly half of all Americans under 65 could lose their insurance at some point during the next decade.

"It can happen to anyone," the president declared.

The rally, at the Target Center, was the first of a series of presidential events intended to whip up public support for a health overhaul. One of the biggest obstacles the president faces is winning support from middle-class workers who already have insurance, so he is stepping up his warnings that people could lose coverage at any time.

On a day when demonstrators crammed onto the west lawn of the Capitol to protest what they regard as Obama's brand of big government, including his health plan, the images of screaming, cheering Obama supporters here provided a welcome visual counterpoint for the White House.

The White House estimated that 15,000 people attended the rally here; the applause was thunderous when the president bounded onto the stage, shirtsleeves rolled up, as he revived an old campaign rallying cry: "Are you fired up?"

The crowd roared back with another Obama favorite: "Yes we can!"

Obama opened his 40-minute speech with what he called "disturbing news": a report from the Treasury Department that, he said, "found that nearly half of all Americans under 65 will lose their health coverage at some point over the next 10 years" and that "more than one-third will go without coverage for longer than one year."

In fact, that is not precisely what the department found when it analyzed data from a University of Michigan survey that tracked the health insurance status of more than 17,000 Americans between 1997 and 2006.

The survey found that 47.7 percent had lost coverage at some point during those 10 years for one month or more, and that 36 percent lacked coverage for at least one year during that time, though not necessarily 12 months consecutively. Obama extrapolated those statistics to predict what might happen in the future.

Critics say that the president, who has deplored the "scare tactics" of his opponents, is now employing scare tactics of his own. But Kathleen Sebelius, the nation's health secretary, who also spoke here, said that even one month without insurance was too long, "if that's the month you get sick."