Michelle Obama Wading, Not Diving, Into Health-Care Debate

A Monday visit to San Francisco demonstrated how First Lady Michelle Obama is wading, not diving, into the health care debate, staying away from any of the contentious issues that are pending in Congress as the Obama administration makes a major push for reforms.

Michelle Obama is no stranger to health care matters. She was an executive at the University of Chicago Medical Center, where her new chief of staff, Susan Sher, was vice president for legal and governmental affairs and general counsel. By focusing on the wellness side of health care -- rather than policy issues, such as whether there will be a government-sponsored "public option" insurance plan in the legislative package, a major item the Obama administration supports -- she avoids any comparison with former First Lady Hillary Clinton, who took on systemic delivery of health care as a signature issue.

Clinton, assuming the role of top strategist and advisor, led the 1993-94 health care drive, to much controversy. In the end, Congress shot down her 1,342-page bill, even as the traveled the country and the White House whipped up grass-roots events to support her initiatives.

ABC's Robin Roberts -- without mentioning Clinton's name -- asked Obama last week what she will do differently on health care, given that the same challenges still exist. The interview was broadcast on Tuesday morning.

"What people are seeing is, the country has moved to another point in time. More and more people are ready for this kind of reform. There are going to be tough choices that have to be made and no system is going to be perfect, which is why my side of the equation, the wellness side, is to me one of the true keys of changing the health paradigm in this country," Obama told Roberts.

Obama has been talking about healthy eating for months now, but the context has been adjusted to play into the Obama White House economic case for health-care reform: Staying healthy saves money.

Obama flew to San Francisco -- her second visit to California as First Lady -- to appear at two events touting volunteerism and public service, elements of her smallish portfolio.

She joined Maria Shriver, the wife of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, in the playground of the Bret Harte School to kick off the administration's "United We Serve" campaign, later keynoting the National Conference on Volunteering and Service at the Moscone Center. Michelle Obama taped a message to open Serve.gov, the Obama White House "nationwide summer of service initiative."

At the playground, Obama talked about, among other things, a healthy diet. Last week she hit the same theme with Washington schoolchildren who were welcomed to the White House to help harvest some of the kitchen garden growing on the South Lawn and who stayed for a late lunch that included the vegetables they cut and washed.

"I've been talking a lot about health lately," Obama said Monday, standing in the Harte school playground.
"America's children, as we all know, deserve the healthiest start that we can possibly give them. And there are several components to a healthy start, and one is eating right, and that's something that I've been talking about with the creation of the first White House Kitchen Garden. We just harvested from that garden earlier this week. It was a wonderful event. The garden is blooming. If you visit the White House, you've got to see this garden. The rain has just made it a tremendous -- just bursting with vegetation. It's really good.

"But health is just one part of it. The other component, as we all know, is that kids have to be active. They have to move their bodies in order to get their minds flowing. It's important for us to help our children understand that connection between what they eat and how they feel, and the fact that if they move their bodies and get their self going, they just have more energy to get through the day. That's our job as the adults in their life.

"And as the President and Congress begin to tackle health-care reform, which is coming up, we will begin to see the costly effects of unhealthy habits that burden our health-care system. We're going to see the costs, where it's going to be more clear to us. Obesity, diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure are all diet-related health issues that cost this country more than $120 billion a year, and that's a conservative figure. While that dollar amount is shocking, and it should be, the effect on our children should be even more shocking.

"Childhood obesity in the United States is reaching epidemic proportions. I talked about this last week at the Garden Harvest. Nearly a third of the children in this country are either overweight or obese, and a third will suffer from diabetes at some point in their lifetime. These are children. And in the African American and Hispanic communities, those numbers climb even higher so that nearly half, okay, half of the children in those communities are going to suffer that fate.

"And for the first time -- and this is the thing that shocked me -- in this history of our nation, medical experts have warned that our youngest generation may be on track to have a shorter life span than their parents as a direct result from obesity.

"This has serious consequences for the immediate and long-term health of individual children and for our national health-care system. There are just too many kids that are living a life off of high-calorie food and they're not getting enough exercise. And in order to stay healthy, children are supposed to get 60 minutes of activity every single day. Now, how many kids in your lives are doing that these days, at least 60 minutes every single day?"

When it comes to healthy eating, Obama told Roberts that she had to adjust some of her daughters' eating habits after getting a nudge from her kids' doctor.

During the campaign, she cooked maybe once a week, did takeout, quick lunches and "a lot of easy fast foods." When she saw this "starting to take a toll" on Malia and Sasha during the campaign, she started everyone on a healthier diet, eliminating fast foods and adding more fresh food.