Obama health plan faces Sunday make-or-break vote

President Barack Obama's Democrats predicted victory in a cliffhanger vote Sunday on his historic plan to extend health care coverage to some 32 million Americans who lack it now.

The 10-year plan, Obama's top domestic priority, aimed to bring the world's richest country closer than ever to guaranteeing health insurance for all of its citizens, with 95 percent of Americans covered.

Amid frenzied efforts to corral the 216 votes needed to muscle the bill through the House of Representatives, Obama on Thursday scrapped plans to leave for Indonesia and Australia early Sunday and postponed his trip to June.

"We greatly regret the delay," White House spokesman Robert Gibbs told reporters, but the "passage of health insurance reform is of paramount importance and the president is determined to see this battle through."

Democratic Senator Max Baucus, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, praised Obama's ability to win over wavering lawmakers, telling reporters: "His personal presence helps."

The president's Republican foes in Congress, meanwhile, made a show of united opposition to the legislation and vowed to make every effort to derail what they called a costly and dangerous proposal.

"We're going to continue to work closely together to do everything that we can do to make sure that this bill never, ever, ever passes," said Republican House Minority Leader John Boehner.

Obama led Democrats in brandishing fresh figures from the independent Congressional Budget Office (CBO) showing the bill would cut the US budget deficit by 138 billion dollars to 2019 and 1.2 trillion the following decade.

"This is but one virtue of a reform that will bring the accountability to the insurance industry and greater economic security to all Americans," said Obama, who hoped the figures would win over deficit-minded centrist Democrats.

The CBO said the plan would cost 940 billion dollars over 10 years, roughly at Obama's self-imposed trillion-dollar price tag, and would extend the solvency of the hugely popular government-run Medicare program for the elderly.

The bill, which would enact the most sweeping overhaul of US health care in four decades, aims to end abusive insurance company practices and curb soaring health care costs that already run double those of other rich countries.

The package, a compromise between rival Senate and House versions passed last year, would create new insurance marketplaces starting in 2014 and require most Americans to carry insurance, while offering help to make such purchases more affordable.

Some of its most popular measures include bans on insurers denying coverage because of preexisting illnesses, on insurers imposing lifetime caps on coverage, and on insurers dropping people from coverage when they get sick.

Democratic House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said all Americans would benefit "if we pass health reform, as we will on Sunday."

Republicans, who opposed the plan from the start, condemned it as an unaffordable plan to foster undesirable government intrusion affecting one sixth of the US economy, with potentially disastrous results.

"This health care bill is bad for patients, it's bad for providers; our doctors, our nurses and our hospitals," and US taxpayers, said Republican Senator John Barrasso.

Democrats, who had awaited the CBO score to formally unveil the package, said they would keep their promise to post it on the Internet for 72 hours before the House vote.

The United States is the world's richest nation but the only industrialized democracy that does not ensure that all of its citizens have health care coverage, with an estimated 36 million Americans uninsured.

House Democratic leaders have done little to deter talk that they will skirt a direct up-or-down vote on the unpopular Senate bill, planning instead to approve a package of "fixes" Sunday that would automatically "deem" the upper chamber's legislation to have been passed.

"They are going to continue to ram, ram, ram this bill through the Congress. Every kind of scheme known to man to try and get it through the Congress without a vote," said Boehner.

The Senate, where Republicans have vowed to prevent an up-or-down vote, is expected to approve the compromise language under rules that blunt the minority party's ability to kill the bill with parliamentary delays.

Democrats aim to take up the bill on Tuesday and wrap up work before the following week. If Republicans force changes to the bill, the House would have to vote again.