Obama pushes health care bill as Kucinich announces his vote

Washington : President Barack Obama claimed his first convert on health care reform on Wednesday, as senior Democrats, labour unions and an array of interest groups intensified their efforts to sway wavering lawmakers before a climactic vote in the House this weekend.

House leaders expressed increasing optimism about pushing Obama's top domestic initiative to final passage, even as they continued to tinker with the last element of the package and their day for a vote appeared to slip to Sunday.

Taking a break from his face-to-face efforts to win support for the measure, Obama made a rare appearance on Fox News Channel to declare that, after a year-long battle, Congress is finally poised to deliver the far-reaching overhaul to his desk.

"I'm confident it will pass. And the reason I'm confident that it's going to pass is because it's the right thing to do," the president said in a sometimes testy interview with reporter Bret Baier, who repeatedly prodded him about special deals contained in the package that were used to win over recalcitrant lawmakers, as well as a much-criticised parliamentary manoeuvre that the House may use.

Not scheduled

The interview interrupted a presidential schedule packed with calls to Capitol Hill, where House leaders said Obama has focused on the 37 House Democrats who voted against health care legislation in November but may be open to supporting the latest package.

Over the past few days, Obama has met privately with at least half a dozen dissenting Democrats in the Oval Office, while lobbying others by phone.

Those efforts paid off on Wednesday, when Rep. Dennis Kucinich of Ohio said at a packed news conference that he will back the still-unfinished package, even though the measure would perpetuate the for-profit insurance system that Kucinich, a former presidential candidate and die-hard advocate of government-provided coverage, views as the source of the nation's health-care problems.

"I have doubts about this Bill. This is not the Bill I wanted to support," the lawmaker said, adding that "careful discussions" with Obama this week on Air Force One helped persuade him.

"I know I have to make a decision not on the bill as I would like to see it, but on the bill as it is," he said.

Meanwhile, in an unusual schism within the Catholic Church over abortion, a consortium of 59,000 nuns waded into the debate, declaring their support for the emerging legislation despite the insistence of the nation's bishops and anti-abortion groups that it would open the door to federal funding of abortion.

"Despite false claims to the contrary, the Senate bill will not provide taxpayer funding for elective abortions," the group said in a letter signed by 60 female religious leaders.

"It will uphold long-standing conscience protections and it will make historic new investments ... in support of pregnant women.

"This is the real pro-life stance, and we as Catholics are all for it."

The nuns' announcement is expected to resonate among a clutch of House Democrats who voted for a health care Bill last fall but have raised objections to abortion provisions in the Senate measure, which the House must approve as part of a final compromise.