Obama says ‘every argument has been made’ on health care, exhorts Congress to pass bill

more images

more images

Obama says time for debating health care is over

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama says the time has come to pass legislation overhauling the health care system, asserting that “every argument has been made.”

Speaking at the White House Wednesday, Obama said “now is the time to make a decision about how to finally reform health care so that it works” for individuals and businesses. The president cited wide-ranging arguments for and against it and confronted head-on the accusation by critics that he has been pushing a government takeover of the system.

Obama said while many other countries have such a system, “in America, it would be neither practical nor realistic.” He also said he doesn’t think “we should give government bureaucrats or insurance company bureaucrats more control over health care in America.”

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP’s earlier story is below.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Declaring the U.S. is “waiting for us to act” after a year of debate, President Barack Obama urged Congress Wednesday to enact his signature health care legislation swiftly. He said it now contains the best ideas from both political parties.

“This is where we’ve ended up. It’s an approach that has been debated and changed and I believe improved over the last year,” Obama said in excerpts released in advance of an appearance at the White House.

The president was also expected to endorse a plan by Democrats to try and enact the legislation by majority vote — using a Senate procedure that would deny Republicans the right to procedural delays.

His appeal came several days after the president convened a bipartisan summit with lawmakers of both parties, then released a revised plan that he said incorporated several Republican suggestions.

Even so, Republicans are solidly opposed to the legislation, demanding instead that Obama and Congress start over again.

At its core, Obama’s proposal would extend health care to tens of millions of uninsured Americans, while cracking down on insurance company practices such as denying coverage on the basis of a pre-existing medical condition. The United States is the only major industrialized country without universal health care.

Obama and congressional Democrats are working to mount a party-line rescue mission for the health care legislation that appeared on the cusp of passage late last year, only to be derailed when Republicans won a Massachusetts Senate seat that gave them the ability to stop it.

There is still no certainty about the outcome — or even that Democrats will agree to the series of changes that Obama said represented Republican contributions.

Whatever the final outcome, the issue is certain to reverberate in this year’s congressional elections, a fact that both Obama and Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell referred to.

“I don’t know how this plays politically, but I know it’s right. And so I ask Congress to finish its work, and I look forward to signing this reform into law,” the president said in the excerpts.

McConnell said that a decision by Democrats to invoke rules that bar delaying tactics would be “met with outrage” by voters, and he said Obama was pushing a sweeping bill that the public doesn’t want.

“They’ve had enough of this yearlong effort to get a win for the Democratic Party at any price to the American people,” McConnell said on the Senate floor.

Even if Obama’s maneuvering draws no Republican support, the White House and Democratic congressional leaders hope it will give comfort to moderate to conservative members of their own rank and file whose votes will be essential to passage.

“I like the idea that the president is working with Republicans and trying to find common ground,” said Sen. Mark Pryor, a centrist Democrat from Arkansas. “I think that’s a good place to be for him; I think that’s what the American people want to see.”

The Democrats’ strategy includes several steps. The House would be required to pass the legislation the Senate passed late last year, and then both houses would be called on to enact a companion bill making changes in the first one.

Democrats talked confidently of the outcome.

If Republicans “want to run a campaign of bring back the day of kicking people off because of pre-existing conditions, I relish it,” the Democratic chairman, Tim Kaine, said on the NBC television’s “Today” show.

Obama has already made the basics of his plan clear. He would extend health coverage to about 30 million uninsured Americans, leash the insurance industry by banning practices like denying coverage for the ill, expand drug benefits for the elderly and give lower-income people subsidies to help them afford coverage. It would be paid for by raising taxes on upper-income Americans and culling savings from a government health care plan for the elderly.

Associated Press writers Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar, Ben Feller, Charles Babington and Erica Werner contributed to this report.