Obama Calls for Compromise on Health Care

VOA News 

U.S. President Barack Obama says he is willing to compromise with Republicans on a final health-care reform bill. 

But in his weekly radio and internet address Saturday, Mr. Obama suggested the Democrats will try to go ahead on their own if Republicans will not join them.

Mr. Obama said he was "eager and willing" to move forward with both parties, if, in his words, "the other side is serious" about getting reform passed. But he said reform "cannot wait".

Minority Republicans want lawmakers to start over with new legislation, while Democrats say there is not time.

But Republicans are not appeased by Mr. Obama's offer to add some of their suggestions to the existing legislation.

In the Saturday response for the Republican party, Senator Tom Coburn said the Democrats were resorting to "procedural tricks" and "back-room deals" to push through their bill, and said the American people want a fresh start.

Health-care reform has been one of Mr. Obama's top priorities since he took office. But Democrats suffered a major political defeat earlier this year when Massachusetts voters elected a Republican to the U.S. Senate seat held for decades by Democrat Edward Kennedy.

That election ended the Democrats' 60-seat supermajority, which had allowed them to contain any Republican efforts to delay or block legislation.