Obama Vows to Push Forward on Healthcare Reform

Despite growing concerns in Washington about the House's newly unveiled healthcare bill, President Obama vowed Friday to push ahead with reform, saying in a hastily arranged speech from the White House that "we are going to have to get this done."

His remarks came one day after Congressional Budget Office Director Douglas Elmendorf told a Senate committee that the House bill, which was released Tuesday amid much fanfare, would not achieve "the sort of fundamental changes" needed to halt runaway federal spending on healthcare.

The CBO's analysis is usually viewed as something of a gold standard by politicians, so Elmendorf's words quickly ricocheted around the city, eliciting uproar from both parties and prompting the White House to put the president before cameras late Friday afternoon to reassert his agenda.

Though Obama did not explicitly refer to the CBO report, he did pledge that the packages being put together by Democrats in Congress will achieve two overriding goals: overhauling the healthcare system and eliminating unnecessary spending while not adding to the country's debt.

Obama has been pressing Congress to move quickly on legislation since the spring, and earlier this week his prodding finally seemed to yield results. The House unveiled its bill on Tuesday, and by Friday morning two of the three House committees that must OK the bill before it goes to the House floor for a vote had approved it. And on Wednesday, the Senate Health Committee approved a similar bill of its own.

By any measure, these gains were precarious, and Elmendorf's comments added new skepticism about the White House effort. On Friday morning, the votes in the two House committees were relatively tight, with some conservative Democrats voting with Republicans against the bill.

As he has done before, Obama tried to use his speech to refocus Congress and the media on the broader effort to reform healthcare and the consequences of not doing so, rather than on the day-to-day developments in the Capitol. "I realize that Washington is often focused on the 24-hour news cycle," the president said. "I want everybody to step back for a moment and look at the unprecedented progress we have made on reform."

Obama rattled off agreements he has reached in recent months with industry groups, including pharmaceutical companies, hospitals, and health insurance providers, and said they represent "a level of consensus around healthcare reform that we have never seen before in this country." He also asked Congress, as part of its reform, to set up an independent panel of doctors and medical experts to annually evaluate ways to lower costs.

Whether Obama's speech achieved his goal of calming Democrat's nerves will be most evident in the House Energy and Commerce Committee, the third committee that has to approve the bill. California Rep. Henry Waxman, who chairs the committee, has planned hearings over several days next week and will have to find a way to convince the eight fiscally conservative "blue dog" Democrats on his committee to support the bill.