President Obama at Arcadia University

The video is from CNN, where the President told the crowd that the time for an up or down vote on health reform is now and that he wanted a bill on his desk by Easter.

More:

Obama dismissed GOP criticism that his nearly $1 trillion proposal fails to control spiraling medical costs.

“You had 10 years,” Obama said in reference to GOP control of Congress. “What were you doing?”

He also brushed aside warnings by political observers that health care reform may lead to major Democratic losses in midterm elections.

Washington is “obsessed with the sport of politics,” he said. “We have debated health care in Washington for more than a year. … When’s the right time? If not now, when? If not us, who?”

And while we’re at it, Chris Bowers at Open Left inventories the ways in which progressives did make the current bill better. This was an exercise worth doing because it often gets lost what the impact of progressive action has been on the current state of the bill. And while it is far from what lots of us wanted, it remains (if passed) a massive shift of policy in a more progressive direction. It is alot easier to organize and argue for specific fixes (as in a real public option — not the House BS — or Medicare buy-in among others) once you’ve established a system where many more Americans can actually get some health care.