Obama promises health care reform will happen this year

In a speech at the White House alongside insurance company executives who had once opposed government intervention in health care, the president laid out his guiding principles for health care reform.

President Obama articulated three core principles for reform. "First, the rising cost of health care must be brought down; second, Americans must have the freedom to keep whatever doctor and health care plan they have, or to choose a new doctor or health care plan if they want it; and third, all Americans must have quality, affordable health care," he said.

The remarks came on a day when the president met with representatives from hospitals, the insurance industry, medical device and pharmaceutical companies, labor and physicians. The group agreed to reduce the annual health care spending growth rate by 1.5 percentage points for the next 10 years, a change that the administration believes could result in savings of roughly $2,500 for American families.

"And that's what makes today's meeting so remarkable," the president said. "Because it's a meeting that might not have been held just a few years ago. The groups who are here today represent different constituencies with different sets of interests. They've not always seen eye to eye with each other or with our government on what needs to be done to reform health care in this country. In fact, some of these groups were among the strongest critics of past plans for comprehensive reform."

The White House called the meeting "one of the most promising signs for health reform to date, and not only because the topic was saving more than $2 trillion on health care costs."

President Obama finished his remarks Monday afternoon with a personal story about his own mother, whose health care challenge he discussed during the campaign but has rarely mentioned since he was elected.

"Ultimately, the debate about reducing costs -- and the larger debate about health care reform itself -- is not just about numbers," Obama said. "It's about our own lives and the lives of our loved ones."

The president said he understood the struggles facing Americans on health care because of the "pain" that he saw his mother go through in her dying days. "As I've mentioned before during the course of the campaign, my mother passed away from ovarian cancer a little over a decade ago. And in the last weeks of her life, when she was coming to grips with her own mortality and showing extraordinary courage just to get through each day, she was spending too much time worrying about whether her health insurance would cover her bills."