Obama heads to Ohio looking for health care votes

WASHINGTON (FOX 25 / MyFoxBoston.com) - With a fresh sense of urgency, President Barack Obama and congressional Democratic leaders pressed wavering rank-and-file lawmakers to back his health care overhaul, determined to give the party something to show voters in the November elections.

Obama was set to head to Midwest state of Ohio today with a final sales pitch for health care legislation that the top Democratic vote-counter in the House said still lacked the necessary votes to pass. Obama's top political adviser, David Axelrod, said he was "absolutely confident" the measure would pass during a make-or-break week that already saw the president delay his trip to Indonesia, Australia and Guam.

"This is the week where we will have this important vote," White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said. "I do think this is the climactic week for health care reform."

Success in getting the legislation passed could determine the future of Obama's presidency and whether he can get other top priority measures, such as immigration reform and curbing climate change, through Congress. Obama campaigned on a promise of offering affordable health care to all Americans and has spent a considerable amount of time in the first 14 months of his presidency trying to bring it about. He said overhauling health care is vital to the United States long-term economic recovery.

Obama's efforts, though, face an uphill challenge for legislation that would provide health insurance to tens of millions who currently have none and would ban insurance companies from denying coverage on the basis of pre-existing medicaol conditions. It would require most people to obtain insurance and would subsidize premiums for poor and middle-income Americans.

In Congress, the House Budget Committee was set to vote on legislation, one of the final steps in the Democrats' more than yearlong quest to get a bill to the president. The panel posted a placeholder bill on its Web site late Sunday that said the goal is "to provide affordable, quality health care for all Americans and reduce the growth in health care spending."

Lawmakers were expected to fill out the details, including the overall cost.

Clinching support for the bill might require Obama to back away from his insistence that senators purge the legislation of a number of lawmakers' special deals.

Taking a new position, Axelrod said the White House only objects to state-specific arrangements, such as an increase in funding a health program for the poor in the state of Nebraska. That is being cut, but provisions that could affect more than one state are OK, Axelrod said.

Axelrod said the principles the White House wants to apply include "Are these applicable to all states? Even if they do not qualify now, would they qualify under certain sets of circumstances?"

Meanwhile, the White House tried to increase public pressure on Congress to pass the legislation. Obama planned to visit Strongsville, Ohio, home of cancer patient Natoma Canfield, who wrote the president she gave up her health insurance after it rose to $8,500 a year. Obama repeatedly has cited that letter from a self-employed cleaning worker who lives in the Cleveland suburb to illustrate the urgency of the massive overhaul.

The House Republican leader, Rep. John Boehner, acknowledged Republicans alone cannot stop the measure but pledged to do "everything we can to make it difficult for them, if not impossible, to pass the bill." Republicans believe they may get help from Democrats facing tough re-election campaigns.