Obama Zeroes In on Health-Care Coverage With Stimulus Signed

President Barack Obama will use the budget proposal he submits to Congress next week to outline how to pay for expanding medical coverage to all Americans, said an administration official who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Obama, on Feb. 24, will speak to a joint gathering of the House and Senate. Two days later, he will submit his budget plan to lawmakers.

The push from Obama will help Congress get to work on the overhaul, said Senator Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat. The president is acting without a Health and Human Services secretary and chief aide for health policy, positions Thomas A. Daschle were supposed to fill before his withdrawal over questions about his taxes. Wyden said Obama’s readiness to move the week after he signed a $787 billion stimulus measure shows the importance of health care to economic growth.

“What the president is saying is you can’t get the economy back on track until you get healthcare on track,” said Wyden, a member of the Finance Committee, which has jurisdiction over U.S. government health programs, and sponsor of a coverage proposal. The budget will help “set the table for health reform,” he said in an interview yesterday.

Obama campaigned on a promise to expand government health programs and give people subsidies to help them afford coverage. He also proposed creating a public plan to compete with private health insurers and taking steps, such as putting more health records in digital form, to help reduce costs.

Health Insurance, Costs

One American in seven lacks health insurance, according to the Census Bureau. For those with coverage, the price rose an average of 5 percent last year, the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation in Menlo Park, California, reported in September.

Obama said during his campaign that covering everyone might cost at least $65 billion a year. His then-Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, now secretary of State, estimated her plan would cost about $110 billion. Clinton’s plan included a requirement that everyone have health insurance. Obama’s didn’t.

David Sloane, a lobbyist with AARP, the advocacy group for older people, said determining who pays is critical.

“Given all other spending priorities and economic peril, there’s a lot of uncertainty whether they can find savings elsewhere to offset this,” Sloane said in a telephone interview on Feb. 19.

Obama’s plans already got a boost in the stimulus package, which he signed Feb. 17. The measure allocates $20 billion to encourage adoption of computerized records and gives $1 billion to research the comparative effectiveness of medical treatments. Both may save money later on, according to the Congressional Budget Office, an arm of Congress.

Bush’s Footsteps

President George W. Bush successfully used his budget to push a new health program. He devoted two sentences in his fiscal year 2002 budget proposal to create a program to subsidize prescription drug coverage for people in Medicare, the U.S. health insurance plan for the elderly and disabled. Congress approved it in 2003.