Obama on healthcare reform, after the Brown election

In a Wednesday interview with George Stephanopoulos, President Obama explains why healthcare reform is necessary and why a comprehensive solution is necessary in order to do any good (in bold, my emphasis):

The reason I tackled healthcare wasn't because this was my personal hobbyhorse. The reason I tackled it was during the course of the campaign, I traveled all across this country and I kept on hearing heart-breaking stories about families who were bankrupt because they got sick. If they had health insurance, suddenly insurance companies were doing things that were just plain wrong, and were leaving folks in an extremely vulnerable position.

And I was talking to businesses who said this was unsustainable. And, by the way, when I got here and I looked at how we were going to get control of our long-term debt, I realized that there was no way for us to control our long-term debt unless we reformed how our healthcare system works.

So there is no doubt that that is something that we had to do. Not because of what I hear in Washington, but because of what I've heard out in the country....

Here's the problem, though. If we didn't take on healthcare, then when were we going to take it on? And if we don't take it on, then when are we going to say to families when -- 2 years from now; 3 years from now; 4 years from now -- their premiums have gone up 30-40%? And have eaten into their wages. And in some cases, their health care's been dropped altogether

What am I going to say to the small businesses who just decide, "We can't afford to provide healthcare to our employees?"

And what am I going to say to the American people when we start talking seriously about how we get our medium- and long-term deficits under control?

... It is very important to look at the substance of this package and for the American people to understand that a lot of the fear mongering around this bill isn't true. I would advise that we try to move quickly to coalesce around those elements of the package that people agree on. We know that we need insurance reform, that the health insurance companies are taking advantage of people. We know that we have to have some form of cost containment because if we don't, then our budgets are going to blow up and we know that small businesses are going to need help so that they can provide health insurance to their families. Those are the core, some of the core elements of, to this bill. Now I think there's some things in there that people don't like and legitimately don't like. If they think for example that there's a carve out for just one or two particular groups or interests, I think some of that, clearing out some of that under brush, moving rapidly...