US President Barack Obama unveiled his own plan to overhaul the US healthcare system in a last-ditch effort to break the deadlock in Congress and prevent Republicans from derailing his agenda.
The Obama plan, a combination of bills already adopted by the Senate and the House of Representatives, aims to cover 31 million uninsured Americans and includes tougher crackdowns on exorbitant premium hikes by insurers.
Republicans attacked the proposals as simply part of a choreographed attempt by the White House to outmaneuver their opposition and force legislation through Congress upon an unwilling public.
As promised, the plan was released 72 hours before Obama holds a live, televised meeting with Republican leaders who have sought to stall his agenda ahead of crucial mid-term elections in November.
Obama is hoping to tap into a new supply of political support arising from the recent decision by leading insurer Anthem Blue Cross of California to raise premiums by as much as 39 percent from Monday.
His plan grants the federal government greater power than both the House and Senate bills to block such hikes and envisages the creation of a new monitoring body of health industry experts.
It claims it could reduce the US budget deficit “by 100 billion dollars over the next 10 years — and about one trillion over the second decade — by cutting government overspending and reining in waste, fraud and abuse.”
White House spokesman Robert Gibbs challenged the Republicans to come back with their own plans and said that “face-to-face discussions” tomorrow were what the public wanted to see.
But Republicans have already set out clear battle lines, arguing that their proposals have been public for some time and that Obama is insincere in his promise to work with them.
Obama’s plan made no mention of the controversial “public option,” a health insurance alternative offered by the government, but Republicans still said it amounted to a federal takeover of the system.
“The president has crippled the credibility of this week’s summit by proposing the same massive government takeover of health care based on a partisan bill the American people have already rejected,” said Representative John Boehner, the top Republican in the House of Representatives.
After months of wrangling, the House and the Senate adopted different versions of the bill late last year but they must be combined into a single piece of legislation for Obama to sign into law.
The Obama plan did win backing from the largest US labor confederation, the AFL-CIO, which urged Republicans to either join “working families or continue to protect the profits of the insurance industry.”
The US is the only industrialized democracy that does not provide health care coverage to all of its citizens.
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