The President spoke impassionately addressing both houses and most democrats agreed it was about time.

“The president’s speech was really a game-changer,” the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, said. “Everything he talked about will be legislation that preserves patients’ choice, lowers costs, improves the quality of care. That’s really what this whole debate is all about.”

Other Democrats said Mr. Obama had shifted the discourse in a way that could generate greater support from centrist lawmakers in both parties.

“He was talking to the American people, particularly to independents,” said Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York. “I don’t think anyone thought after hearing the speech 12 Republican senators would get up and say, ‘I’m for you, Mr. President.’ But when they go back to their constituencies who did hear the speech, they may feel differently in terms of how to approach this. 

Obama plans to speak in Minnesota on Saturday and also appear on 60 minutes

In the recession, the nation’s poverty rate climbed to 13.2 percent last year, up from 12.5 percent in 2007, according to an annual report released Thursday by the Census Bureau. The report also documented a decline in employer-provided health insurance and in coverage for adults.

The rise in the poverty rate, to the highest level since 1997, portends even larger increases this year, which has registered far higher unemployment than in 2008, economists said.

The bureau said 39.8 million residents last year lived below the poverty line, defined as an income of $22,025 for a family of four.

In another sign of both the recession and the long-term stagnation of middle-class wages, median family incomes in 2008 fell to $50,300, compared with $52,200 the year before. This wiped out the income gains of the previous three years, the report said.

Adjusted for inflation, in fact, median family incomes were lower in 2008 than a decade earlier.

“This is the largest decline in the first year of a recession we’ve seen since the Census Bureau started collecting data after World War II,” said Lawrence Katz, an economist at Harvard University, referring to household incomes. “We’ve seen a lost decade for the typical American family.”

The share of American residents who said they lacked health insurance throughout the entire year remained steady, at 15.4 percent, or 46.3 million people. But the total masked some more worrisome trends that are helping to drive the debate over a national health care overhaul.

Continuing an eight-year trend, the number of people with private or employer-sponsored insurance declined, while the number of people relying on government insurance programs including Medicare, Medicaid, the children’s insurance program and military insurance rose.

The share of children who were uninsured declined, to 9.9 percent from 11 percent in 2007, apparently because of the federal government’s special efforts to insure low-income children. But at the same time, the share of adults aged 18 to 64 without health insurance rose, to 20.3 percent in 2008 from 19.6 percent in 2007.