WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama’s plan to provide medical insurance for all Americans took a big step toward becoming reality Sunday after leaders of the health care industry offered $2 trillion in slowed rate increases over 10 years to help pay for the program.
Hospitals, insurance companies, drugmakers and doctors planned to tell Obama today that they’ll voluntarily slow their rate increases in coming years in a move that government economists say would create breathing room to help provide health insurance to an estimated 50 million Americans who now go without it.
Some officials said the plan could save $2,500 a year for a family of four by the fifth year.
In remarks prepared for today, the president says: “These groups are voluntarily coming together to make an unprecedented commitment. Over the next 10 years, from 2010 to 2019, they are pledging to cut the growth rate of national health care spending by 1.5 percentage points each year — an amount that’s equal to over $2 trillion.”
With this move, Obama picks up key private-sector allies that fought former President Bill Clinton’s effort to overhaul health care in 1993.
Although the offer from the industry groups doesn’t resolve thorny details of a new health care system, it does offer the prospect of freeing a large chunk of money to help pay for coverage. And it puts the private-sector groups in a good position to influence the bill Congress is writing.
Obama has offered an outline for overhauling the health care system, and he wants Congress to work out the details and pass legislation this year. His plan would build on the current system, in which employers, government and individuals share responsibility for paying the cost and care is delivered privately.
The government would play a stronger role by subsidizing coverage for many more people and spelling out stronger consumer protections.
But the industry groups are trying to get on the administration bandwagon for expanded coverage now in the hope they can steer Congress away from restricting their profitability in the future.
Insurers, for example, want to avoid the creation of a government health plan that would directly compete with them to enroll middle-class workers and their families.
Drugmakers worry that new medications might have to pass a cost-benefit test before they can win approval.
And hospitals and doctors are concerned the government could dictate what they get paid to care for any patient, not only the elderly and the poor.
Obama has courted industry and provider groups, and there’s a sense among some of the groups that now may be the best time to act before public opinion, fueled by anger over costs, turns against them.
Obama’s plan envisions that people would be able to keep the coverage they have.
The New York Times contributed to this report.
