Today's Globe: Obama's talk to AMA, health bill costs, diabetes. vs. AIDS, life-sciences innovation, John Trakas

President Obama yesterday took the fight for a public healthcare option to a skeptical audience, telling the American Medical Association that a government plan that would compete with private insurers is "not your enemy; it is your friend."

A leading healthcare bill under consideration in Congress would cost the government an estimated $1 trillion over the next decade and reduce the ranks of the uninsured by about one-third, or 16 million individuals, congressional budget officials said in a preliminary estimate yesterday.

"The World Health Organization has warned that diabetes, obesity, hypertension, and other diseases of development are well on their way to becoming entrenched worldwide," columnist Derrick Z. Jackson writes on the opinion page. "Those diseases do not get as much attention in Africa because of the scourge of AIDS and the perpetual struggle against malaria."

"The goals at the Massachusetts Life Sciences Center are to create jobs, drive innovation, and support good science that holds potential to improve the human condition," Susan Windham-Bannister, president and CEO of the center, writes on the opinion page. "For every dollar of taxpayer money invested, it has returned $8 in additional economic activity, generating new state revenue and nearly 1,000 jobs in the process."

Dr. John C. Trakas, an only son of Greek immigrants who became a US Army surgeon, World War II hero, and doctor to thousands of Bostonians, died on June 6, the 65th anniversary of D-Day, at age 91.