Washington - The White House, backing away from President Barack Obama's "it's-all-on-the-table" approach initially advocated, prepared to get louder and more involved in the details of a health care overhaul that officials once were content to leave to Congress, administration officials said Saturday.

    The White House's attention increases as Congress turns to a priority that officials watched in recent weeks drift off what has otherwise been a precise pathway. Even with an Obama-imposed August deadline, many administration aides weren't sure just how much they would be able to accomplish before Congress left for the summer, and Obama has turned to his grassroots supporters to pressure Congress to find a solution.

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President Obama | Transcript: Goals for Health Care Reform    â€¢

    Covering 50 million uninsured Americans could cost as much as $1.5 trillion over a decade, but Obama has cited the crippling impact on the economy of soaring health care costs and society's long-standing need to resolve the problem. Obama and lawmakers say they want to lower costs, ensure choice and provide coverage to those who are uninsured. Obama and his advisers initially let Congress take the lead, remembering what happened when President Bill Clinton took to Congress a plan deemed too detailed and too prescriptive.

    Draft legislation from the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee would require employers to cover their employees or pay a penalty and would guarantee coverage for all.

    But Obama supports a new public insurance plan that would give all Americans the opportunity of getting government-sponsored care. Private insurers are adamantly opposed, fearing they'd be driven out of business, as are most Republicans. And Obama's team has grown more willing to take the lead.

    "If we do nothing, everyone's health care will be put in jeopardy," said the president, in his prerecorded Saturday radio and Internet address, aired while he attended D-Day ceremonies in France. "Fixing what's wrong with our health care system is no longer a luxury we hope to achieve - it's a necessity we cannot postpone any longer."

    Congress still hasn't figured out how to pay for the health care overhaul. Obama has put forward some ideas, including cuts to Medicare and Medicaid. Others he's suggested, including limiting some high-income tax deductions, have already gotten shot down on Capitol Hill.

    Obama has stated a preference for a bipartisan solution, but that's looking harder to achieve.

    A long-planned grassroots effort is meant to illustrate power and, at the same time, to intimidate opposition. It is coming with Obama's explicit blessing, according to officials, who spoke anonymously to discuss private conversations.

    Aides at Organizing for America - as Obama's political arm is known - said tens of thousands of supporters participated in thousands of events for health care overhaul on Saturday.

    With some 14 million e-mail addresses and an Internet-based advocacy machine that helped him win an election, Obama's political arm sought to deliver changes to the health system similar to the ones Obama talked about during the campaign - not one that was mauled through endless compromise or one far different from the one that motivated thousands of volunteers last fall.

    Obama has indicated he wanted to hear Democrats' and Republicans' ideas, but has also told them that he's the president and they are among many elected members of Congress. They also were warned that the re-election campaign-in-waiting was revving its engines.

    That part of the message was clear, even if other pieces were not.

    After Senate Democrats met with Obama and his top aides in the State Dining Room, one of the president's fellow Democrats marched to a White House microphone and declared that the administration was open to taxing health care benefits - something Obama opposed during campaign and remains personally against.

    "It's on the table. It's an option," said Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont.

    The problem, Obama aides later reluctantly acknowledged: Obama had said exactly what the powerful chairman said.

    Obama had refused to declare any provision "a sacred cow," according to an official familiar with the negotiations who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal meetings. Although Obama's personal position on the tax is clear, he had sought to let lawmakers fashion the exact language.

    No more, Obama's team said. If the president wants health care overhaul, the White House needs to control what's being said, not its allies - or, worse, its rivals.

    "This issue, health care reform, is not a luxury," Obama said in his radio and Internet address. "It's not something that I want to do because of campaign promises or politics. This is a necessity. This is something that has to be done."

    Obama summed up his message with a simple declaration: "It's time to deliver."

President Obama | Transcript: Goals for Health Care Reform

Saturday 06 June 2009

by: President Barack Obama, t r u t h o u t | Transcript

    Over the past few days, I've been traveling through the Middle East and Europe working to renew our alliances, enhance our common security, and propose a new partnership between the United States and the Muslim world.

    But even as I'm abroad, I'm firmly focused on the other pressing challenges we face - including the urgent need to reform our health care system. Even as we speak, Congress is preparing to introduce and debate health reform legislation that is the product of many months of effort and deliberation. And if you're like any of the Americans I've met across this country who know all too well that the soaring costs of health care make our current course unsustainable, I imagine you'll be watching their progress closely.

    I'm talking about the families I've met whose spiraling premiums and out-of-pocket expenses are pushing them into bankruptcy or forcing them to go without the check-ups or prescriptions they need. Business owners who fear they'll be forced to choose between keeping their doors open or covering their workers. Americans who rightly worry that the ballooning costs of Medicare and Medicaid could lead to fiscal catastrophe down the road.

    Simply put, the status quo is broken. We cannot continue this way. If we do nothing, everyone's health care will be put in jeopardy. Within a decade, we'll spend one dollar out of every five we earn on health care - and we'll keep getting less for our money.

    That's why fixing what's wrong with our health care system is no longer a luxury we hope to achieve - it's a necessity we cannot postpone any longer.

    The growing consensus around that reality has led an unprecedented coalition to come together for change. Unlike past attempts at reforming our health care system, everyone is at the table - patient's advocates and health insurers; business and labor; Democrats and Republicans alike.

    A few weeks ago, some of these improbable allies committed to cut national health care spending by two trillion dollars over the next decade. What makes this so remarkable is that it probably wouldn't have happened just a few short years ago. But today, at this historic juncture, even old adversaries are united around the same goal: quality, affordable health care for all Americans.

    Now, I know that when you bring together disparate groups with differing views, there will be lively debate. And that's a debate I welcome. But what we can't welcome is reform that just invests more money in the status quo - reform that throws good money after bad habits.

    We must attack the root causes of skyrocketing health care costs. Some of these costs are the result of unwarranted profiteering that has no place in our health care system, and in too many communities, folks are paying higher costs without receiving better care in return. And yet we know, for example, that there are places like the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio, and other institutions that offer some of the highest quality of care in the nation at some of the lowest costs in the nation. We should learn from their successes and promote the best practices, not the most expensive ones. That's how we'll achieve reform that fixes what doesn't work, and builds on what does.

    This week, I conveyed to Congress my belief that any health care reform must be built around fundamental reforms that lower costs, improve quality and coverage, and also protect consumer choice. That means if you like the plan you have, you can keep it. If you like the doctor you have, you can keep your doctor, too. The only change you'll see are falling costs as our reforms take hold.

    I also made it very clear to Congress that we must develop a plan that doesn't add to our budget deficit. My budget included an historic down payment on reform, and we'll work with Congress to fully cover the costs through rigorous spending reductions and appropriate additional revenues. We'll eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse in our health care system, but we'll also take on key causes of rising costs - saving billions while providing better care to the American people.

    All across America, our families are making hard choices when it comes to health care. Now, it's time for Washington to make the right ones. It's time to deliver. And I am absolutely convinced that if we keep working together and living up to our mutual responsibilities; if we place the American people's interests above the special interests; we will seize this historic opportunity to finally fix what ails our broken health care system, and strengthen our economy and our country now and for decades to come.