CQ Health Beat: At Summit, Obama Says He Wants Health Care Overhaul Finished This Year

From The Congressional Quarterly Health Beat:President Obama said Thursday that he wants an overhaul of the nation’s health care system completed by the year’s end, calling it a “fiscal imperative” vital to restoring the economy. Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus, who will write any overhaul, meanwhile announced a series of meetings intended to result in compromise legislation.

In opening remarks to a “Forum on Health Reform” at the White House, Obama told an audience of about 150 lawmakers, health care industry lobbyists, labor union leaders, consumer advocates, policy experts and journalists that his administration and Congress must overcome “special interests” that have prevented sweeping health care overhauls in the past. Many of those same special interests had representatives at the forum.

Obama said that circumstances are different from the last time a full-scale health care overhaul was attempted in 1993 and 1994 by President Bill Clinton. That effort failed, done in by fierce lobbying against it by insurers and businesses and a lack of commitment within Congress, including among members of Clinton’s own party.

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