Obama Brings Together Old Health Foes to Start Work on Overhaul

President Barack Obama’s decision to bring together historical adversaries for today’s health care summit may be the easiest step in making sure everyone can afford coverage, said Republican U.S. Senator Orrin Hatch.

“There will be some broken pottery” by the time Congress finishes the job Obama is demanding, Hatch said in an interview. Hatch will take part in today’s White House conference, where Obama will hear from Democrats wanting a government alternative to private coverage, Republicans opposing that, doctors demanding no reductions in their fees, and insurers arguing against rate cuts.

The administration says it wants insurers, drugmakers, consumers, hospitals and others in the health-care field to talk about how to make affordable medical coverage available to everyone. It’s an attempt to provide the open process that Obama has promised. To succeed, he is trying to build support among groups that helped sink former President Bill Clinton’s 1993 attempt to reshape the health system.

“We have learned lessons from what happened in the past,” said Melody Barnes, who directs Obama’s Domestic Policy Council, in an interview. “It is important to bring everyone together and important for us to next engage with Congress.”

Obama’s budget to Congress last week proposed creating a $634 billion fund over 10 years to use to begin getting everyone health insurance. The president didn’t offer an exact plan, saying he was open to “all serious ideas,” including taxing employer-provided health, something he opposed during the campaign.

Obama also said Congress will have to come up with additional money to pay the full cost of making health care affordable to all and available to the 46 million Americans now without medical insurance. It would take more than $100 billion annually to meet that goal, according to health economists.

‘Rebuild Our Economy’

“If we want to create jobs and rebuild our economy, then we must address the crushing cost of health care this year, in this administration,” Obama said in remarks prepared for the 120 participants in the conference. “Making investments in reform now, investments that will dramatically lower costs, won’t add to our budget deficits in the long-term -- rather, it is one of the best ways to reduce them.”

Health-care groups are ready to accept changes, said Charles Kahn, who had fought Clinton’s plan and now is president of the Federation of American Hospitals, which represents about 17 percent of U.S. hospitals. The U.S. recession, job losses and health-care costs -- premiums last year rose 5 percent -- require fixing health care, which is driving up costs for businesses as well, he said.

A ‘Completely Different’ Time

“Today is completely different,” Kahn said by telephone. “We want this to happen. There is an expectation that there will be shared sacrifice to make this happen and we are more than willing to take part in the discussion to decide what that’s to be.”

During his presidential campaign, Obama called for subsidies to help people afford coverage expanding government health programs. Obama also has proposed creating a public plan to compete with private insurers in addition to steps, such as putting more health records in digital form, to help reduce costs.

Some campaign promises got a boost in the stimulus package, which the president signed Feb. 17. The measure allocated $20 billion to encourage adoption of computerized records and gave $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.

The meeting guest list includes about 60 members of Congress, among them Republicans involved in health committees, such as Texas Representative Joe Barton and Michigan Representative Dave Camp, both members of their party’s Health Care Task Force. Senator Michael Enzi, a Wyoming Republican, and Charles Grassley, an Iowa Republican, also will be there.

“I’d be concerned if the president wasn’t having a health-care reform process,” said Grassley, a member of the Finance Committee, which has jurisdiction over Medicare and Medicaid, the government’s chief health-care programs. Still, “we shouldn’t nationalize one more percent” of health care.