CHICAGO (AFP) — President Barack Obama Monday warned America would go broke if it rejected healthcare reform, cranking up a hard sell on a "ticking timebomb" issue central to his sweeping plans for political change.
Obama made a quick trip to his home city of Chicago to try to convince skeptical doctors of the merits of his government plan to equip all Americans, including 46 million currently uninsured, with "affordable" health insurance.
"To say it as plainly as I can, health care is the single most important thing we can do for America's long-term fiscal health -- that is a fact," Obama told the annual meeting of the American Medical Association (AMA).
"If we do not fix our healthcare system, America may go the way of GM, paying more, getting less and going broke," Obama said, citing the bankrupt General Motors to highlight the burden US firms face in insuring workers.
Lambasting critics who claim he is out to frame a "socialized" state-run health system, Obama vowed to cut costs of existing private plans and to use preventive medicine as a way to reduce the long-term price of healthcare.
Calling the healthcare burden a "ticking time bomb" for the federal budget, Obama also made a moral case, bemoaning that despite America's immense wealth, tens of millions of people languish with no insurance whatsoever.
"We are not a nation that accepts nearly 46 million uninsured men, women and children ... we are a nation that cares for its citizens, we are a people who look out for one another."
His pitch comes with healthcare costs rising fast, squeezing many employers at a time of economic crisis and with many families struggling to make ends meet.
A pitched political fight is already raging in Congress over healthcare reform, which confounded the previous Democratic president Bill Clinton, and was a central plank of Obama's 2008 campaign program.
If the president prevails, he will bolster his political muscle for key political battles to come on all manner of domestic and foreign policy issues.
Obama's foes scent a chance to cripple his young presidency by inflicting a damaging defeat -- much as happened to Clinton in 1993.
Senate Republicans were Monday staking out the ground for a confrontation, with one eye on mid-term congressional elections in 2010.
"Americans don?t want a government-run system that puts bureaucrats between patients and doctors," said Mitch McConnell, the Senate's top Republican.
"They certainly don?t want the kind of government boards that exist in places like New Zealand and Great Britain that deny, delay and ration treatments that are currently available to Americans."
The White House is proposing a new "public" program to compete with private insurance plans many US workers get through their employers.
Obama critics claim reform plans would starve patients of choice, erode the quality of healthcare and saddle the industry with an inefficient new government bureaucracy.
Even some senior Democrats doubt the votes in Congress are there to support any form of government intervention.
Kent Conrad, the chairman of the influential Senate Budget Committee, who will play a key role in the reform debate, concurred.
"You have got to attract some Republicans, as well as holding virtually all the Democrats together," Conrad said on CNN's "State of the Union."
"That, I don't believe, is possible with the pure public option. I don't think the votes are there."
Conrad has suggested a new idea -- a network of non-profit health insurance cooperatives free of direct government control, to bypass critics of a federal health plan.
The AMA has also criticized Obama's plans for a public component to the health plan, arguing that private markets work better.
But J. James Rohack, AMA president-elect, praised Obama's call for investment in preventative medicine and backed a general call for reform.
"I think the important signal is that we are at a watershed moment in our country," he said.
The president, who got a mostly warm welcome, did make a gesture towards the doctors, saying he wanted to do something about the fear of malpractice law suits stalking the industry. However he disappointed his audience by coming out against a cap on negligence awards.
Critics also argue that with the US budget deficit soaring to a projected 1.8 trillion dollars this year, the government cannot afford to intervene in the healthcare market.
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