Obama pitches health care at college campus

COLLEGE PARK, Md. — President Barack Obama called reinventing health care a "defining struggle of this generation," even as several Democrats criticized some of the fine print in the Finance Committee's new proposal.

Obama pressed on nonetheless, telling thousands of college students at a campaign-style rally that Congress must resist scare tactics and false accusations to do a makeover.

The fight will be difficult, and resistance that started surfacing Thursday to a key provision in Sen. Max Baucus' bill illustrated that. Several Democrats said publicly they were worried that a new tax that Baucus would impose on high-value health insurance policies would end up hitting middle-class workers.

Some members of Obama's own party pushed back against the Finance panel's language on this issue — lawmakers who fear, as do some of Obama's labor backers, that the tax would hit people who shouldn't have to pay more for coverage.

The president has mostly seemed unfazed by the torrent of criticism directed at the plans for a system overhaul. And on Thursday during his appearance at the University of Maryland, he said an "unprecedented coalition" of hospitals, doctors, nurses and drug makers support the effort. Some of the most enthusiastic backers, he told loudly cheering students at the University of Maryland, "are the very medical professionals who have firsthand knowledge" of how badly the current system operates.

"When I sign this bill, it will be against the law for insurance companies to drop your coverage when you get sick," the president said.

Obama again called for a public insurance option, which most congressional Republicans, and some Democrats, oppose. It would not amount to "a government takeover of health care," he said. Obama stopped short of insisting on such a plan.

Eliminating "waste and abuse" in the Medicare and Medicaid programs will help the government find money to cover most of the Americans now without insurance, he said.

Baucus is a Montana Democrat and chairman of the Finance Committee. The bill he introduced Wednesday, among other things, aims to roll back spiraling medical costs and require nearly everyone to carry health insurance. A vote in his committee could occur as early as next week, but many hurdles remain in both the House and Senate.