Obama to push health care as lawmakers debate overhaul

The US House of Representatives opened a historic debate yesterday on remaking US health care, with President Barack Obama set to make a rare in-person appeal for his top domestic priority.

Obama hoped to bring the full persuasive power of the US presidency to bear in an 11th hour push to secure the 218 votes needed to pass what would be the most ambitious overhaul of its kind in nearly half a century.

Shortly before the formal debate began, Democratic House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer predicted passage of the legislation cobbled together in months of public talks and backroom negotiations.

"We think we'll have 218 by the time we vote on this bill later on this afternoon or early this evening," Hoyer told MSNBC television, describing himself as "confident" in the outcome.

All 177 House Republicans are expected to oppose the measure, meaning Democrats can afford just 40 defections from their 258-seat majority and still pass the bill in a vote expected as early as yesterday.

But the White House and its allies were leaving nothing to chance, bringing in Obama to urge wavering lawmakers to "do this for the country, do this for your constituents", according to the president's spokesman, Robert Gibbs.

Republican delaying tactics could stall the bill, a 10-year plan, estimated at about one trillion dollars, to extend health coverage some 36 million Americans who currently lack it.

But Republican opposition was hardly the only hurdle: Democrats were wrestling with a bitterly divisive intra-party feud over whether government funds could go, even indirectly, to funding abortions.