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WASHINGTON: US President Barack Obama confidently declared Wednesday that his historic health care overhaul legislation would pass, as the bill faced a cliffhanger weekend vote likely to define his legacy.
Obama, waging an uphill campaign to rescue his top domestic priority, drew 11th-hour support from a fellow Democrat long opposed to the initiative and a group of Catholic nuns who broke with the church's bishops to back the plan.
"I'm confident it will pass. And the reason I'm confident that it is going to pass is because it is the right thing to do," the president told Fox News anchor Bret Baier in a sometimes contentious interview.
Obama, facing resistance to the unpopular legislation from swing-district Democrats worried about November mid-term elections, said Americans angry with the way things are expected action from their representatives in Washington.
"If they vote against it, then they are going to be voting against health care reform and they are going to be voting in favor of the status quo," Obama told Fox in a bid to build support for the broadly unpopular measure.
The bill aims to extend health coverage to at least 31 million Americans who currently lack it, end abusive insurance company practices, and curb soaring health care costs that run roughly double those of other rich countries.
Republicans, who were united against the bill, warn it will raise taxes and that it seeks savings in the government-run Medicare program for the elderly that could come at the expense of its patients.
The president and Democratic congressional leaders were piling pressure on wavering Democrats in an effort to win a final House of Representatives vote on the far-reaching bill before he leaves on a trip to Asia on Sunday.
Obama got good news as Democratic Representative Dennis Kucinich, vowing to keep fighting for his dream of a nationalized health system, said he could not risk helping Republicans defeat the bill and break the still-young presidency.
"We have to be very careful that the potential of president Obama's presidency not be destroyed by this debate," Kucinich, who voted "no" when the House took up the measure last year, told reporters.
Obama, who most recently courted Kucinich during a Monday ride to Ohio aboard the presidential Air Force One airplane, called the very liberal lawmaker's change of heart "a good sign" and thanked him by telephone.
The reversal came as Democratic House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said the vote would come "certainly Saturday or Sunday," pending estimates on cost and deficit impact from the independent Congressional Budget Office (CBO).
Democrats said they had yet to rally the 216 votes needed to pass the bill, amid united opposition from Republicans eager to deny the president his goal of enacting the most sweeping changes to US health care in four decades.
Kucinich, once opposed to the bill on grounds it is too timid, said "something is better than nothing" and underlined: "If I can vote for this bill, there's not many people who shouldn't be able to."
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.
The Senate and House of Representatives passed rival versions of the legislation last year, and top Democrats now seek a way to get the House to approve the Senate bill with changes and get a final bill to Obama's desk.
The overhaul got another boost when Catholic nuns, in an unusual public break with the church's bishops, endorsed the Senate bill and said they were satisfied it would not lead to government money going to abortion.
About 60 leaders of orders representing tens of thousands of US Catholic nuns signed a letter backing the bill, which Catholic Bishops have opposed on grounds it would lead to federal abortion funding.
Republicans scheduled a series of public denunciations of the bill on Thursday and continued to condemn Democrats for relying on procedural tactics little-known outside Washington - but relatively common in the US Congress - to muscle the bill to passage.
Democrats may rely on a "self-executing rule" that would spare the House from a direct up-or-down vote on the Senate bill, which would instead be deemed automatically passed when lawmakers approve a package of changes.
"They want to hide what they're doing from the American people, whom they seem to view as an obstacle," said Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.
The Senate would have to approve any such fixes to send them to Obama in a different procedure, known as "reconciliation," that requires a simple majority and blunts Senate Republicans' ability to kill the bill with delaying tactics.
- AFP/sc
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