Borrowing a community organizing technique, the incoming administration is asking Americans to host meetings to come up with ideas. They'll send discussion packets to anyone who signs up.

    Washington - Former Sen. Tom Daschle, in his first major speech since being asked to head President-elect Barack Obama's healthcare reform effort, on Friday announced a nationwide campaign this month to solicit public input on improving the nation's healthcare system.

    The plan - asking Americans to host meetings to talk about reform - appears designed to avoid the appearance that the new administration is developing a sweeping agenda behind closed doors.

    That perception is widely believed to have helped doom the Clinton administration's healthcare reform efforts in the early '90s, when then-First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton led a months-long task force that wrote the administration's legislation.

    "We want an open process," Daschle told a healthcare forum convened in Denver by Sen. Ken Salazar (D-Colo.).

    In Washington, Democratic officials have been meeting privately for weeks to develop legislation, which senior lawmakers hope to unveil in early January, to reshape the country's healthcare system, a longtime goal of the party.

    Obama, Daschle and others - including Massachusetts Sen. Edward M. Kennedy - envision an effort by the federal government to ensure that all Americans get health coverage, to bring down healthcare costs and to improve the quality of care.

    Daschle, a former majority leader whom Obama has asked to be Health and Human Services secretary, said Friday that the transition team would send discussion packets to any American willing to host a house party in the last two weeks of December.

    He said he would attend a meeting himself, and invited Americans to sign up for the events at the transition website, www.change.gov.

    Some 10,000 people, many of them already involved in grass-roots efforts to push healthcare reform, have submitted comments on the website, according to Daschle.

    The Obama team's maneuver builds on organizing techniques pioneered by liberal grass-roots groups like MoveOn.org and deployed by Obama during the presidential campaign.

    It also reinforces the message that Obama has delivered since his election, that he intends to take aggressive steps to tackle the issue despite the worsening economic situation.

    "President-elect Obama has made health reform one of his top priorities," Daschle said. "And I'm here to tell you that his commitment to changing the healthcare system remains strong and focused."

    Levey is a writer in our Washington bureau.