Aug. 11 (Bloomberg) -- President Barack Obama will defend the Democratic Party’s plan to overhaul the U.S. health-care system at a town hall today in New Hampshire as criticism around the country heats up.

Democrats in the House and Senate holding forums during Congress’s August recess have encountered protesters holding signs and screaming slogans such as “just say no” to the health-care plan. Today, Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter faced scores of critics at a meeting in his home state.

Obama is “prepared to have a robust and vigorous discussion,” White House deputy press secretary Bill Burton told reporters yesterday. “We look forward to it.”

The Democratic National Committee has accused Republicans of orchestrating disruptions. Obama encourages public debate and thinks citizens on different sides of an issue deserve to be heard, Burton said on Air Force One as the president returned from a two-day meeting with the leaders of Canada and Mexico.

“There’s actually a pretty long tradition of people shouting at politicians in America,” Burton said. “If you just want to come to a town hall so you can disrupt, so that you can scream over another person, he doesn’t think that’s productive.”

Obama and some Democrats in Congress are pushing plans that would offer the option of purchasing health insurance from a government-run program, while requiring all Americans to get coverage and putting new restrictions on insurers. Republicans say the effort will increase costs and limit medical choices.

Town Hall

About 1,800 people are scheduled to attend this afternoon’s event in a Portsmouth, New Hampshire, high school, with most of the tickets available to the public, Burton said. Obama will talk about issues such as his support for a provision that would prohibit insurers from denying coverage to people because of previous health problems, Burton said.

Earlier today in Lebanon, Pennsylvania, Specter faced constituents who at times resorted to shouting. One man told Specter that he and his colleagues in Congress would answer to God. “He’s going to judge you,” the man said before leaving.

People at the town-hall meeting expressed concern about the cost of the legislation, whether federal money would be used to pay for abortions and whether the government would take over their health-care decisions. A man also got a round of applause after saying the measure shouldn’t cover illegal immigrants.

Specter’s Answers

Specter, who left the Republican Party this year, told the crowd that he wouldn’t vote for legislation that added to the deficit or covered illegal immigrants. He told them the current proposals wouldn’t change the prohibition on government money being used for abortions and that they can keep their current insurance if they’re happy with it.

The senator told the group that the “social compact” the government has with Americans requires it to “take care of people who need some help.” He also found one woman who agreed that the system needs to be revamped.

“I knew that if I looked hard enough, far enough in this group that I’d find someone who liked the health-care plan,” Specter said.

The House of Representatives started a five-week recess on July 31 after putting off a vote on health-care legislation until September. The Senate began its break on Aug. 7 with one of the two committees working on the issue still struggling to find a bipartisan compromise.

Health-Care Issues

Lawmakers are grappling with such issues as whether to create a government-run health-care plan which would compete with private insurers, whether to mandate employer-provided coverage for most workers and how to pay for a plan that may cost $1 trillion over 10 years.

Democrats are aiming to cover millions of uninsured Americans while reducing health-care costs that make up about a sixth of the nation’s economy. The effort to convince voters that they are on the right track has been complicated by polls showing that Americans increasingly disapprove of the changes.

“The Republicans and the Democrats are going to spend an awful lot of money” trying to influence voters in August, Peter Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University polling institute, told reporters last week in Washington. “There’s this gigantic battle.”

House Republican leader John Boehner’s office last week released a statement saying that “Americans are showing genuine concern about the cost and consequences of a government-run health plan.”

The Obama administration yesterday began an Internet counterattack by introducing a new section of the White House Web site called “Reality Check” to respond to what Democrats have called misleading charges about the health-care measure.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs last week accused a group opposing health-care overhaul of disrupting town-hall meetings by “manufacturing” outrage. The House’s top Democrats, Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, wrote a column yesterday in USA Today decrying the disruptions.

“Drowning out opposing views is simply un-American,” they wrote.

To contact the reporter on this story: Kristin Jensen in Washington at kjensen@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: August 11, 2009 12:17 EDT