Obama calls holdouts on health care

WASHINGTON (AP) — Amid intense lobbying by the Obama administration, House Democratic leaders struggled Friday for the final votes needed to pass sweeping health care legislation, working to ease concerns among Hispanic holdouts and abortion foes.

“We’re very close” to having enough votes to prevail, said Majority Leader Steny Hoyer of Maryland, although he added a scheduled Saturday vote could slip by a day or two and sought to pin the blame on possible Republican delaying tactics.

“Nice try, Rep. Hoyer, but you can’t blame Republicans when the fact is you just don’t have the votes,” shot back Antonia Ferrier, spokeswoman for the GOP leader, Rep. John Boehner of Ohio.

In a struggle that combined the fate of President Barack Obama’s top domestic priority and a 2010 campaign issue, bipartisanship was not an option.

GOP leaders boasted that all 177 House Republicans stood ready to oppose the $1.2 trillion bill, which would create a new federally supervised insurance marketplace where the uninsured could purchase coverage.

Consumers would have the option of picking a government-run plan, the most hotly contested item in the legislation and the basis for the Republican claim that Democrats were planning a government takeover of the insurance industry.

Democrats said their bill was designed to spread coverage to millions who lack it, ban insurance industry practices such as denying coverage on the basis of pre-existing medical conditions and restrain the growth of health care spending nationally. The Congressional Budget Office said that if enacted, the measure would extend coverage to 96 percent of all eligible Americans within 10 years.

Obama and his administration lobbied furiously for its passage.

Rep. Jason Altmire, a second-term Democrat from western Pennsylvania, said he received calls during the day from the president, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and Education Secretary Arne Duncan. Their message was “this is a historic moment. You don’t want to end up with nothing,” he said.

Altmire added his callers emphasized the legislation would change once it left the House, “but if you kill it now it’s over” for the foreseeable future. He said he remained undecided on his vote.

Several Democrats have already announced their opposition, most of them moderate to conservative members of the so-called Blue Dog Coalition.

Democrats hold 258 seats in the House and can afford 40 defections and still wind up with 218, a majority if all lawmakers vote.

The White House issued a statement of support for the measure, saying it “meets the president’s criteria for health insurance reform: It assures that all Americans have access to quality, affordable health care that is there when they need it and does so without adding a dime to the deficit.”

Months after Obama urged lawmakers to remake the health care system, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the leadership struggled to resolve controversies over the bill’s treatment of illegal immigrants and insurance coverage for abortion, issues that transcend health care and have long divided the Democratic cacus as they do the nation.

Abortion blended politics and religion.