Pres. Obama Possibly Open To Public Option Alternative...Promises Reform Before Year's End

Bloomberg, Huffington Post----

President Barack Obama said he’s “absolutely” confident a comprehensive health-care overhaul package will be passed by Congress and enacted into law by the end of this year.

“We’re going to get it done,” Obama said today in an interview on ABC’s “Good Morning America.” He cited the pressure of insurance premiums increasing by two or three times in the last decade.

The administration would pay for the bulk of the overhaul by squeezing savings out of Medicare and reducing the value of tax deductions available to the wealthy. The Senate Finance Committee is struggling to reduce the cost of the plan to about $1 trillion over 10 years, down from a $1.6 trillion cost estimate by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

“Doing nothing means more people losing their coverage, higher costs for families, higher cost for businesses” and the bankruptcy of Medicare and Medicaid, the president said in the interview.

A central argument over the legislation is whether to create a public health-care program to compete with private insurers. Such a plan, backed by Obama, is meeting resistance from Republicans and even some Democrats.

Rangel’s Prediction:

Representative Charles Rangel, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, said that chamber will pass a measure that includes a public program.

“Americans overwhelmingly support a public option for health care,” Rangel, a Democrat of New York, said today in an interview with Bloomberg Television. “We need competition.” Rangel’s committee holds a hearing on the legislation today.

Obama is signaling that he’s willing to compromise, and yesterday White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel carried the message to lawmakers that the president is “open to alternatives,” Senator Kent Conrad of North Dakota said.

Obama holds a town hall-like meeting on health care at the White House tonight that will be broadcast on ABC-TV at 10 p.m. Washington time.

“If any reform that we get is not driving down costs in a serious way, we won’t do it,” Obama said today. He left the door open for taxing employer-paid health benefits, saying that “I’m going to wait and see what ideas” lawmakers have.

Game-Changers:

Obama said an overhaul package must include best practices in medicine to reduce costs, and it must include steps to encourage wellness programs and family-care physicians.

“If there aren’t some basic game-changers in the system,” he said, “then I’m not for the bill.”

Kathleen Sebelius, secretary of the Health and Human Services Department, carried the administration’s message today to the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

“The president is open to good ideas about how we finance health reform,” she said in prepared testimony. “But we will not add to the deficit in the next decade.”

Obama has already proposed savings of $950 billion over 10 years, and “much of these resources will come from increasing efficiency and wringing waste out of the current system,” Sebelius said.

“Inaction is not an option,” she said. “Every delay raises the price tag.”

Her predecessor in the George W. Bush administration, Michael O. Leavitt, said finding the money for an overhaul will be difficult, especially when it comes to Medicare, the program for the elderly and disabled.

“The president has suggested we’ll have $300 billion dollars worth of reductions in Medicare costs,” he said in an interview with Bloomberg television. “Two years ago I took a $158 billion package of reductions to the Congress. I was politically stoned by the party now in control and frankly by members of my own party.”

Sources: Bloomberg.com, Huffington Post, Whitehouse.gov, Flickr