Health-care mandate no tax rise, Obama says

WASHINGTON — Requiring people to get health insurance and fining them if they don't would not amount to a backhanded tax increase, President Barack Obama said Sunday. "I absolutely reject that notion," he stated.

Blanketing five Sunday TV news shows, Obama defended his proposed healthcare overhaul, including a key point of the various health-care bills on Capitol Hill: mandating that people get health insurance to share the cost burden fairly among all. Those who failed to get coverage would face financial penalties.

Obama said other elements of the plan would make insurance affordable for people, from a new comparison-shopping "exchange" to tax credits.

Telling people to get health insurance is absolutely not a tax increase, Obama said on ABC's This Week.

"What it's saying is, is that we're not going to have other people carrying your burdens for you anymore," said Obama. "Right now everybody in America, just about, has to get auto insurance. Nobody considers that a tax increase."

Obama said one of his goals for health-care legislation is to make insurance affordable ifit's going to be required for everyone. He said that can be done by making plans compete for customers and providing tax credits for premiums.

Emergency care for those now without insurance is imposing a burden on families in the form of higher premiums and higher payments for their own care, said Obama, who promised during his campaign that he would not raise taxes on middle-income Americans.

Obama faces an enormous political and communications challenge in selling his health-care plan as Congress debates how to pay for it all.

He told CBS' Face the Nation that he will keep his pledge not to raise taxes on families earning up to $250,000, and that much of the final bill - hundreds of billions of dollars over the next 10 years - can be achieved from savings within the current system. Coming up with the rest remains a key legislative obstacle.

Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele said there is no way Obama can achieve his goals without raising taxes.

"He has to. How else do you pay for it?" he told CBS.

Obama put his support behind the idea of taxing employers that offer high-cost insurance plans.

"I do think that giving a disincentive to insurance companies to offer Cadillac plans that don't make people healthier is part of the way that we're going to bring down health-care costs for everybody over the long term," Obama said on NBC's Meet the Press.

Obama's network interviews were taped Friday at the White House. He became the first president to appear on five Sunday network shows in the same morning, an effort to build public support for his top domestic priority.

The goal is to expand and improve health insurance coverage and rein in longterm costs.

Despite many weeks of speeches, town-halls and interviews, Obama said he has found it difficult at times to make a complex topic clear and relevant.

"I've tried to keep it digestible," Obama said. "It's very hard for people to get their arms around it. And that's been a case where I have been humbled and I just keep on trying harder."

Obama told Univision's Al Punto, or To the Point, that the strong opposition to his plan is part of a political strategy.

"Well, part of it is ... that the opposition has made a decision," he said. "They are just not going to support anything, for political reasons."

Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said Obama doesn't understand Republicans' opposition.

"I don't know anybody in my Republican conference in the Senate who's in favor of doing nothing on health care," McConnell said. "We obviously have a cost problem and we have an access problem."

But he told CNN's State of the Union that the Democrats' plan is too rushed.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, RS.C., said Obama has ignored grave concerns over his plan and his media blitz won't change that.

"The president is selling something that people, quite frankly, are not buying," Graham said on Meet the Press. "He's been on everything but the Food Channel."

The administration planned the media drive as lawmakers begin a critical week in the debate. Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus will convene his committee Tuesday for three days of debate on his health-care proposal.

Baucus' plan hasn't yet drawn in Republican support and has come under criticism from other Democrats such as Sen. Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi because it doesn't include an option for a government run health insurance program.

Baucus wants to raise $215 billion over a decade to help pay the estimated $856 billion cost by imposing a 35 percent excise tax on insurance companies that offer plans valued at $8,000 for individuals and $21,000 for families. It also would require almost all Americans to have insurance or pay a penalty.

"Everybody's going to have to give some in order to get something done" on health care, Obama said on Meet the Press. "We've got to get past some of these ideological arguments to actually make something happen."

Obama said on ABC that the various proposals being considered in Congress have "80 percent of what I'd like to see" in health-care legislation. "That last 20 percent is tough," he said.

On CNN and Univision, Obama addressed concerns that illegal aliens might benefit from an overhaul. "I don't think that illegal immigrants should be covered under this health-care plan," Obama said on CNN.

Obama dismissed suggestions from some Democrats, including former President Jimmy Carter, that racism is behind some of the most vocal criticism of his policies.

"What I think is going on is that we've got a healthy debate taking place," he said on NBC. "The vast majority of people are conducting it in a very sensible way." Information for this article was contributed by Nicholas Johnston, Hans Nichols, Kristin Jensen and Tim Homan of Bloomberg News.