CHICAGO AND WASHINGTON — President Obama on Monday made his most detailed pitch yet for a $1-trillion overhaul of the nation's burdened healthcare system, calling it a "ticking time bomb" that threatens the nation's prosperity.
Throughout his speech to the nation's largest doctors group, Obama sought to inoculate himself against opponents who have suggested his proposal would amount to a government takeover of healthcare.
"We are spending over $2 trillion a year on healthcare, almost 50% more per person than the next most costly nation," he told 2,200 people, including more than 1,200 physicians, at the American Medical Assn.'s annual meeting in Chicago. "For all this spending, more of our citizens are uninsured, the quality of our care is often lower, and we aren't any healthier."
Obama tried to preserve an emerging consensus that the time might be right to overhaul the nation's healthcare system. But that has become increasingly challenging as he and his congressional allies begin to outline more specific policy prescriptions that may expand the private insurer's role.
"Let me also address an illegitimate concern that's being put forward by those who are claiming that a public option is somehow a Trojan horse for a single-payer system," Obama said. "But I believe, and I've taken some flak from members of my own party for this belief, that it's important for our reform efforts to build on our traditions here in the United States."
The challenges of advancing major healthcare legislation were underscored Monday by a preliminary report from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, which estimated that the first major Democratic health bill -- prepared by Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) -- could cost about $1 trillion over the next decade, while covering only about 16 million more people.
There are more than 46 million people in America without health coverage.
The office also estimated, in a six-page letter to Kennedy, that the number of people getting healthcare from their employer would decline by about 10%, or 15 million individuals, as people switched to a new insurance exchange.
Those numbers will almost certainly change as the legislation is adjusted by lawmakers in coming months. But the letter is already fueling GOP charges that the changes being pushed by Democrats would undermine the existing employer-based healthcare system.
