Obama Lobbies for Support as Health-Care Vote Nears (Update1)
By Roger Runningen
March 19 (Bloomberg) -- President Barack Obama appealed for last-minute support as he and House leaders lobbied for about a half-dozen more votes to push a $940 billion overhaul of the U.S. health-care system through to passage.
“If this vote fails, the insurance industry will continue to run amok,” the president said at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. “That’s why they’re doing everything they can to kill this bill.”
Obama, making his fourth speech on the subject in two weeks, delivered a campaign-style address to an audience mostly made up of students, a group that he tapped to propel his presidential campaign and now is trying to rally to keep pressure on Congress.
“You’ve got to help us finish this fight,” Obama told the crowd. “You’ve got to stand with me just like you did three years ago and make some phone calls and knock on some doors, talk to your parents, talk to your friends. Do not quit.”
Heading toward a weekend vote, the White House and Democratic congressional leaders are targeting a group of 14 to 15 undecided lawmakers to get to the 216 votes needed to pass the measure, according to administration officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because vote-counting was private.
Cancelled Trip
The stakes are so high for the president that he took the unusual step of postponing, for the second time, a planned five- day trip to Guam, Indonesia and Australia. Instead, he’ll remain at the White House this weekend to lobby wavering lawmakers to support a $940 billion bill that is of “paramount importance” to his presidency, spokesman Robert Gibbs said.
Except for the speech, Obama largely cleared his schedule today to make way for legislative courtship, by telephone or in person before a vote that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said would probably come on March 21.
“When we bring the bill to the floor we will have a significant victory for the American people,” Pelosi said today when asked by reporters if House Democratic leaders have the votes to pass the measure.
The original House bill passed 220-215 in November.
The legislation, on the agenda for the past year, would cover 32 million uninsured Americans, curb medical costs, reduce the federal budget deficit, prohibit insurance companies from dropping coverage during illness and order companies to coverage pre-existing conditions.
Republican Opposition
Republicans are unified in opposition, saying it imposes new taxes and uses budget gimmicks to mask costs that will appear later in the life of the bill.
“They can tweak this thing and tweak it,” House Republican Leader John Boehner of Ohio told reporters yesterday. “Still, it’s a trillion dollars they are going to spend.”
Caterpillar Inc., the world’s largest maker of construction equipment, said today it opposes the legislation because taxes and “new-coverage mandates” would increase company health-care costs by 20 percent, or more than $100 million.
“In our fragile economy, we can ill-afford cost increases that place us at a disadvantage versus global competitors that are not similarly burdened,” Gregory S. Folley, vice president and chief of human resources, said in a letter to Pelosi and Boehner.
Jim Owens, chairman and chief executive of Peoria, Illinois-based Caterpillar, is a member of Obama’s board of outside economic advisers to lead the nation out of recession.
The legislation represents the most significant health-care revamp since the creation of the Medicare program for the elderly in 1965. Americans would benefit from more access to preventive care and young adults could stay on their parents’ insurance until age 26, Democrats said.
Insurers such as Indianapolis-based WellPoint Inc. would get millions of new policyholders while being required to accept all customers. Standard & Poor’s 500 Managed-Care Index is up 70 percent over the last year.
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