Summit to study road ahead on healthcare
WASHINGTON - President Obama will convene a healthcare summit at the White House today that he hopes will lay the groundwork for a major overhaul of the nation's healthcare system later this year.
About 120 participants will attend the forum, which will feature small-group discussions, like the "fiscal responsibility" summit held last week, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said yesterday.
Gibbs said Obama, who is also tackling a budget, grievous economic problems, and two wars, is not concerned about appearing unrealistically ambitious by taking on healthcare. In his budget proposal last week, the president set aside $634 billion over 10 years as a "down payment" on the overhaul, which many analysts predict will cost $1 trillion or more.
"I guess we could wait another few years, as families in this country have waited for quite some time for somebody to step forward and take control and bring down healthcare costs," Gibbs said. "But the president has decided that instead of waiting as has been done before, he's going to step forward and try to do that, starting now."
In a sign of the political challenges ahead, Max Baucus, chair of the Senate Finance Committee, issued a statement yesterday saying he met with Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and suggested he would prefer a cap on the amount of employer-provided health benefits that can be excluded from taxation, rather than limit itemized tax deductions for some families, which Obama proposed in his budget. Obama campaigned hard against a proposal by Republican rival John McCain to tax health benefits.
After the November election, Obama called on Americans to hold community forums on healthcare and send ideas on how to fix the country's ailing health system. The administration will present a summary of the feedback at today's summit.
The report, made available to the Globe yesterday, compiles the responses of 3,272 hosts of the nearly 9,000 community discussions held nationwide, as well as surveys from some 30,000 participants. Using sophisticated data analysis and teams of volunteers sorting through the data, the administration compiled a 120-page report that shows strong consensus on the problems facing the healthcare system.
