May 13 (Bloomberg) -- President Barack Obama said “the stars are aligned” for Congress to pass legislation to revamp the U.S. health-care system this year, which he said would help revive the economy and get budget deficits under control.

“Businesses are using money to pay their rising health- care costs that could be going to innovation and growth and new hiring,” Obama said today at the White House. “That’s why we have to get this done. We have to get it done this year.”

The president spoke after meeting with top House Democrats, including Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer of Maryland, as he spends the third straight day focusing on his push to restructure the health-care system.

Pelosi said she is “quite certain” the House would have a floor debate on health-care legislation by July.

Lawmakers in the House and Senate are sorting through options for extending insurance to the estimated 46 million Americans without health coverage while holding down the costs. The most contentious issue may be how to pay for the president’s plan without adding to the deficit, which the administration projects will hit $1.84 trillion this year and $1.26 trillion the next.

Deficit Effect

“We’ve had a lot of discussions in this town about deficits,” Obama said. “The most significant driver, by far, of our long-term debt and our long-term deficits is ever- escalating health care costs.”

Obama’s fiscal 2010 budget would spend $634 billion over 10 years as a “down payment” for the overhaul. The amount would be financed by increasing taxes on wealthy Americans and cutting spending growth on government payments to doctors and drugmakers.

The Republican minority in Congress has put up resistance to the president’s plan, saying that it would limit health-care choices and widen the deficit. A budget blueprint that endorses Obama’s health-care priorities passed without a single Republican vote in the House and Senate.

Republican leaders today said they would oppose any system that would create a government-run insurance program, saying it would undermine employer-provided benefits.

Republican Alternative

“We are working on a better solution for health care that will maintain the doctor-patient relationship, making sure that patients can choose their own doctor and not be forced into some government-run health-care program,” Representative John Boehner of Ohio, the party’s leader in the House, said.

Republicans are concerned “about a government option that we believe in the long run will starve out the private option” that insures 150 million Americans through their employers, he said. “By and large they like the insurance they have.”

Representative Mike Pence of Indiana, the No. 3 House Republican, said that the government-run health-insurer plan plus possible taxation of employer-provided benefits “is a pathway to socialized medicine and the American people are not buying it.”

“When the government becomes the insurer of last resort, rationing of health care with scarce government resources is inevitable,” Pence said.

Obama and his aides have said they want to preserve the employer-based system of providing insurance. Obama today repeated that among his criteria for health-care legislation is that Americans would still be able to choose their own doctors and insurance plans.

‘The Time Is Now’

“We’re seeing now that traditional opponents of health care reform are embracing these ideas,” Obama said. “They recognize that the time is now.”

The president has spent each day this week seeking to keep up momentum for health-care legislation. Yesterday he highlighted “best practices” in corporate health programs at such companies as Johnson & Johnson, Safeway Inc., and Microsoft Corp., which promote fitness and wellness as ways to reduce medical expenses.

On May 11, Obama held an event to announce a pledge from drug companies, hospitals, insurers and other related groups to slow health-care spending by 1.5 percent a year over the next decade. The promise would save about $2 trillion, Obama said.

Along with action in the House, the Senate Finance Committee set out options that included a mandate that all Americans get health coverage as well as the creation of a government-run program to compete with private insurers.

Obama has said he wants Congress to create a plan that would reduce medical costs and extend coverage to the 46 million uninsured people in the U.S. They were 15 percent of the U.S. population in 2007, according to U.S. Census data released in August.

To contact the reporters on this story: Edwin Chen in Washington at Echen32@bloomberg.net; Julianna Goldman in Washington at jgoldman6@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: May 13, 2009 13:45 EDT