Obama talks health care in Green Bay

The president will talk directly with voters about his proposals to spend $1.5 trillion over the next decade to cover uninsured Americans. Administration aides said the visit was designed for Obama to build support for a health care overhaul that has eluded Democrats for decades, as well to inject a personal angle in to a debate that affects some 50 million Americans without insurance.

WASHINGTON (AP) - President Barack Obama takes his push for health care reform on the road today, hosting a town-hall meeting in Green Bay, Wis.

Such emotional pleas will be part of the hard sell Obama's supporters will employ in coming weeks. Although Obama publicly maintains all options are on the table — a posture they repeated when they met with senators at the White House on Wednesday — they has approved his political arm to push ahead with a strong political campaign in support of his favored positions.

Green Bay resident Laura Klitzka, a 35-year-old, married sister of two, was set to introduce Obama at a town hall-style meeting. Klitzka has metastatic breast cancer and carries about $12,000 in unpaid medical bills.

Administration officials said the president's speech in Green Bay would contain no new policies, but would instead put Obama — and the traveling White House press corps — in position to hear directly from people who are affected in the existing technique. Those stories, Obama's political aides said, would be key to selling the final product.

Obama's trip comes as a possible compromise emerged in the Senate to five of the most vexing obstacles in the health care reform debate. Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., offered a plan to develop health care cooperatives owned by groups of residents and tiny businesses. They would operate as nonprofits and without the government involvement that troubles Republicans and others about other public plan options. The chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, Sen. Max Baucus of Montana, said Wednesday the idea could be key to a bipartisan health bill.

Obama's grass-roots machine, known as Organizing for The united states, has collected hundreds of thousands of similar stories that finally could shame lawmakers who don't sign onto Obama's broad plan.
"When the debate heats up — which it is already is beginning to — the most powerful thing that we have at the grass roots level are people's stories," said Dan Grandone, a political aide who runs Obama's reelection campaign-in-waiting in Wisconsin.

Obama has set a deadline of this year to pass health care legislation. They heads to Chicago on Monday to address the American Medical Association. They recently told political supporters during a private conference call that if reform doesn't happen this year, the opportunity would pass.
"What we're doing right now is we're really priming the pump. I mean, we will ramp this activity up, we'll make more explicit calls for people to call members of Congress — every member of Congress that we can get a call into — as we approach key votes," Grandone said.|