Health-Care Overhaul Still on Table

WASHINGTON—The Obama administration still foresees a major health-care overhaul in its 2011 budget, estimating that the cost of the legislation will reach $743 billion over 10 years.

Budget documents released by the White House estimate that in 2011 alone the costs of legislation will total $16 billion and the cost will rapidly increase each year until 2020. The budget states that the figures come from the Congressional Budget Office's estimates of House and Senate-passed version of the bills.

The health-care bills have been in jeopardy since Republican Scott Brown won a special election in Massachusetts last month, causing Democrats to lose their filibuster-proof 60-40 majority in the Senate. Now Democratic lawmakers are scrambling to find a path forward on the legislation and are trying to decide whether to pursue a bill aimed at providing health-insurance coverage for nearly all American or pass smaller-scale legislation.

While the 10-year, $743 billion figure in the budget is considerably lower than the cost of either the House or Senate bills, the White House said that other legislative initiatives in its budget would overlap with portions of those bills.

Several major administration policy efforts on health care, including health information technology and comparative effectiveness research, would see increased funding under the Department of Health and Human Services $81.3 billion budget.

The department's Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, a new agency designed to provide recommendation on the effectiveness of medical therapies and practices, would receive $611 million in 2011. Health-care analysts say that such research could play a major role in reducing long-term health costs.

The Obama administration has proposed a crackdown of Medicare fraud in the bill, proposing $561 million for control of health-care fraud and abuse. By some estimates, more than $60 billion each year is lost to fraud in the program.

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