Obama shifts into campaign mode on health care

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama achieved a milestone Wednesday when a Senate committee approved a plan to revamp the U.S. health care system.

The Senate panel's action, opposed by Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, and all other Republicans on the committee, came as the president's campaign organization rolled out television ads to build support for his top domestic priority.

Hatch complained the bill is "another $1 trillion Democratic bill that will impose a job-killing employer tax, create another government-run health-care program and give Washington bureaucrats more power than ever before to dictate health care for families in Utah and across the nation."

The committee earlier killed a Hatch amendment designed to ensure the bill will not lead to taxpayer-funded abortions, but did pass another of his amendments that would protect makers of biologic drugs (made from living cells) from competition from generic drug manufacturers for 12 years.

Obama met with Republicans at the White House in search of an elusive bipartisan compromise on his call to expand coverage to the nearly 50 million uninsured Americans as well as restrain spending increases in health care.

But the 13-10 party-line vote in the Senate health committee signaled a deepening rift in Congress. While Democrats respond to Obama's call for action with renewed determination, Republicans are using harsher words to voice their misgivings.

In the House, Democrats began pushing legislation through the first of three committees, although moderate and conservative members of the rank and file were demanding changes. In the Senate, lawmakers were considering fees on health insurance companies as a new source of potential financing for a $1 trillion package that's short on funds.

"We have delivered on the promise of real change," Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., said as he presided over the Senate health committee vote, alluding not only to his bill but also to Obama's campaign promise.

The president was in the Rose Garden for the latest in a daily series of public appeals to Congress to "step up and meet our responsibilities" and move legislation this summer. Obama also pushed his message in network television interviews, telling employers that his plan would require them to offer benefits or face a fine.

"If you can afford it, either give your employees health insurance or pay into the pot so that we're not subsidizing you," Obama told CBS News.