President Obama believes the cost of inaction on health finance would be far greater than the cost of reform efforts, the president's spokesman said Tuesday.
Health reform came up during a White House press briefing.
Obama campaigned for health reform Monday, during a speech at the annual meeting of the American Medical Association, Chicago.
At the White House press briefing, a reporter asked about a Congressional Budget Office forecast suggesting that a health reform proposal unveiled by Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., and his colleagues would cost $1 trillion.
"I think what's important is what the president outlined yesterday, in his speech to the doctors, that we know clearly what the cost of inaction is," White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said, according to a briefing transcript. "We know what that cost is to the federal budget; we know what it is to state budgets; we know what it is to budgets of families and to businesses, large and small. And that inaction is something we simply can't afford.
The version of the Kennedy proposal that the CBO analyzed is an older, incomplete version, Gibbs said.
