Obama Ramps Up Health Care Stakes After Roller Coaster Week

You cannot go a minute in this town -- Washington, that is -- without some new development on the health care front. This has been an especially roller coaster week, and President Obama decided to end it on his terms -- with a strong statement about health reform and a White House announcement that he'll have a press conference Wednesday night.

That's two things to talk about on the Sunday shows besides testimony Thursday from Doug Elmendorf, director of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, that more than one media outlet called devastating. Elmendorf said health reform not only won't save money over the long run, it will contribute to the national debt.

Obama's response, according to a pool report: "Health insurance reform cannot add to our deficit over the next decade and I mean it."

He also said that health care will be costly whether Congress does anything or not. "Make no mistake, if we step back from this challenge -- at this moment -- we are consigning our children to a future of skyrocketing premiums and crushing deficits. There's no argument about that," he said.

Those betting against reform this year, Obama added, "are badly mistaken. We are going to get this done. We will reform health care. It will happen this year."

Obama is intensifying an already concerted push on the House and Senate to pass bills in the next three weeks, then work out the differences between them in early fall. The White House said he met Friday with 40 House freshmen Democrats on health care and two moderate Democratic senators, Evan Bayh of Indiana and Kent Conrad of North Dakota. That came after meetings earlier this week with four Republican senators and Democrat Ben Nelson of Nebraska.

The week has been a series of peaks and valleys on health care. Three House committees unveiled a unified bill that received high praise from The New York Times editorial board and was panned by the board at The Washington Post. The American Medical Association endorsed the House bill and then Elmendorf pulled the fiscal rug out from under it. One of two Senate committees handling health reform completed work on a bill while the other-- the Finance Committee -- bogged down in attempts to find a bipartisan way to pay for the reforms.

The basic goals of all the bills are to control costs, cover most of the 46 million people who are uninsured, and give everyone more choices of coverage. The White House is pressing for more ways to save money through Medicare, and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi said the House might be receptive to some changes. She said House Democratic leaders are "very proud of the cost savings" in their bill - and "of course we want more."