First lady Michelle Obama campaigns for health

BOWLING GREEN -- First lady Michelle Obama touted her husband's health-care reform plan at a clinic in Caroline County yesterday, saying that if the bill does not pass, health-care costs will skyrocket.

"Health-insurance reform isn't just about the nearly 46 million Americans who don't have insurance. It's about all those folks who do," Obama said.

The first lady cut a ribbon and spoke about health care at the grand opening of the new clinic in a strip shopping center.

The Obama administration is stepping up its push for health-care reform amid charges from opponents that the plan will increase costs, rather than lower them. The president travels to Bristol tomorrow for a health-care town-hall meeting with supermarket employees.

Without reform, one of every $5 spent in the next decade will be on health care, the first lady said, noting that Americans spend more than any other country on health care but aren't as healthy as many other nations.

With an overhaul of health care, more attention will be paid to prevention rather than health-care emergencies, she said.

This was Obama's third stop at a community health clinic. Community health centers "dig a little deeper," asking questions about the length of time between doctor visits or when the patient last had a mammogram, she said.

Caroline Family Practice, using $1.3 million in federal stimulus money, converted a long-vacant grocery store into a medical facility with 12 exam rooms, four dental operators, and space for behavioral health and counseling.

Caroline is federally designated as a medically underserved area and as an area with a shortage of health professionals. The family-practice clinic is part of the Central Virginia Health Services, a nonprofit community health service that serves 14 sites in central Virginia.

Obama, wearing a sleeveless blue dress, spoke to about 100 people crowded into an overheated room at the front of the clinic. One person had to receive medical attention because she felt faint.

Earlier, the first lady met privately with two family-care physicians, a dentist, a medical student, a pediatrician, and a patient whose life had been saved by a clinic doctor after she suffered an aneurysm. She mostly listened to their health-care experiences and asked few questions.

Obama appeared particularly interested in the shortage of primary-care physicians. A medical student said few students are taking up that profession because it doesn't pay as much as specialties and that students are finishing medical school with too much debt.

"I remember Marcus Welby; that's the doctor everybody wanted to be," Obama said, referring to a popular television series in the 1970s that featured a kindly doctor.

Obama was driven to the clinic about 70 miles down Interstate 95 from the White House. A few people protesting the president's health-care plan greeted her.

Virginia's first lady, Anne Holton, and her daughter, Annella Kaine, were on hand, as well as Caroline's oldest resident, Maggie James, who is 109.

Contact Tyler Whitley at (804) 649-6780 or .