By Keith Coffman
DENVER (Reuters) - President-elect Barack Obama's transition team will kick-start the process of healthcare reform with a series of meetings across the country, modelled on those his campaign held last summer.
"Providing quality affordable health care for all Americans is one of my top priorities for this country because our long-term fiscal prospects will have a hard time improving as long as sky-rocketing health care costs are holding us all down," Obama said in a statement on Friday.
"Yet in order for us to reform our health care system, we must first begin reforming how government communicates with the American people," he said.
"These Health Care Community Discussions are a great way for the American people to have a direct say in our health care reform efforts and I encourage Americans to take part if they are able."
Former Senate Democratic leader. Tom Daschle, Obama's choice for Health and Human Services Secretary, said the meetings would start on December 15 and run through December 31, before the new president is inaugurated on January 20.
Obama's Internet site www.change.gov asks people to submit ideas for changing America's costly and inefficient healthcare system, which leaves tens of millions uninsured.
Speaking at a meeting of healthcare industry experts in Denver, Daschle said he would like to "allow the states to be workshops and laboratories of innovation."
'DETAILS KILL'
Daschle said past efforts to reform the healthcare system had been bogged down in details and he pledged to fight against long, cumbersome legislation.
"Details kill," he told the meeting of about 500 executives. "Once we get started, let's finish and not languish."
Politicians, labour unions, health insurers, doctors and the general public all agree that the United States needs to reform its inadequate healthcare system, which is also the most expensive in the world.
Close to 46 million Americans have no health insurance, and Americans are more likely to die of common diseases than people living in many other developed countries.
"The myth is that we have the best healthcare system in the world," Daschle said, adding: "We do have islands of excellence in a sea of mediocrity."
During his campaign for the presidency, Obama pledged to bring health insurance to millions of uninsured Americans and to spend about $50 billion (34 billion pounds) to make medical records electronic.
Many health reform advocates believe he will need broad public support to overhaul an industry that has become among the most intractable of U.S. political problems.
As evidence of that, New York Sen. Hillary Clinton failed to push through a healthcare reform plan during her husband Bill Clinton's first term as president.
American voters put healthcare reform as their biggest concern after the economy and the Iraq war, but finding the money and ingenuity to fix the system will be particularly difficult during an economic recession.
U.S. healthcare costs now account for about 16 percent of U.S. gross domestic product -- or $2.3 trillion -- a proportion projected to grow to 20 percent or $4 trillion by 2015.
(With additional reporting by Donna Smith in Washington; Writing by Maggie Fox, editing by Chris Wilson)
