Obama invokes grandmother's death in health care debate

Grand Junction, Colorado: President Barack Obama has made it clear that his efforts to reform the US health care system have meaning to him personally.

On Saturday, Obama invoked his own anguish over the death of a loved one as he challenged the notion that Democratic efforts to overhaul the nation's health care would include "death panels" that decided who would get care and who wouldn't.

"I just lost my grandmother last year. I know what it's like to watch somebody you love, who's ageing, deteriorate and have to struggle with that," an impassioned Obama told a crowd as he spoke of Madelyn Payne Dunham. He took issue with "the notion that somehow I ran for public office or members of Congress are in this so they can go around pulling the plug on grandma."

"When you start making arguments like that, that's simply dishonest - especially when I hear the arguments coming from members of Congress in the other party who, turns out, sponsored similar provisions," Obama said.

Reforming the US health care system is Obama's top domestic priority and arguably his most challenging political fight yet as president, in no small part because of the vast number of diverse stake-holders involved.

His goal is to ensure health care for everyone in a country with the world's costliest system and an estimated 48 million uninsured people.

It's an issue that touches everyone in the United States. There are thickets of competing interests among patients, doctors, drug makers, insurers, labour, businesses and others.

Any plan must get through a Democratic-controlled Congress, where most lawmakers are up for re-election next year.