Health industry to deliver plan to White House

WASHINGTON — Health industry officials pushed to get a plan to the White House Monday documenting how they'd save $2 trillion over a decade through measures like reducing hospitalizations and cutting down on paperwork.

On Capitol Hill, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy's health committee was readying legislation to implement President Barack Obama's goal of extending coverage to 50 million uninsured Americans. A plan to achieve the same goal, but through some different measures, was taking shape in the tax-writing Senate Finance Committee, led by moderate Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont.

The two chairmen pledged over the weekend to work together.

Health insurers, doctors, hospitals, drug-makers and others were under pressure to make good on a pledge they made last month to curb their own costs to help Obama achieve his health care goals.

Their White House photo-op was closely followed by criticism that their plans were short on detail and unenforceable, and Obama asked them for a progress report. They were expected to deliver it Monday.

"We welcome the efforts of the private sector health industry groups to spell out the ways in which they would achieve these savings that they told the president they could achieve," said White House health spokeswoman Linda Douglass in anticipation of receiving details from a leading labor union and five major industry groups including the American Medical Association and America's Health Insurance Plans.

Plenty of work lay ahead. Kennedy's health committee forecast a more liberal plan than what Baucus appeared likely to produce.

Among other potential areas of difference, Kennedy has committed to including in his bill a new public insurance plan that would compete with private insurers for the first time to cover middle-class Americans.

Baucus has said he supports a public plan, but he is trying to produce a bipartisan bill that can keep his top committee Republican, Chuck Grassley of Iowa, on board. Grassley — along with other Republicans and the business community — has expressed strong opposition to the new public plan concept, saying it could drive private insurers out of business.

The result could be that both committees produce legislation with public plans, but that they are structured quite differently, according to committee aides. One possibility the Senate Finance Committee has discussed is an approach that would trigger a government-sponsored plan only if private insurance companies weren't offering good enough options.

Meanwhile, a coalition of progressive groups, including Howard Dean of Democracy for America, announced plans Monday to spend $82 million on advertising and organizing in favor of Obama's health care overhaul.