Published: July 23, 2009 01:44 pm      

Indiana Rep. Baron Hill meets with Obama, concerned about costs of health care reform

Before President Barack Obama addressed the nation on health care reform Wednesday, he sat down with members of the Congressional Blue Dog Coalition to try and gain advocates for his plan.

The coalition describes itself as fiscally-conservative House Democrats.

Coalition member Rep. Baron Hill hasn’t given his full support of the health care package yet, and he reiterated that stance Tuesday to Obama.

“Any health care reform legislation must be deficit neutral, focus much more heavily on cost containment and seriously address the ills of our current system,” the Indiana Democrat stated in a news release.

Support for the president’s health care overhaul plan has been waning on both sides of the aisle, with some lawmakers doubting a decisive action will be taken before the end of the summer session.

“No one wants to tell [House Speaker Nancy Pelosi] that she’s moving too fast and they damn sure don’t want to tell the president,” Rep. Charles Rangel, D-NY, was overhead by Associated Press reporters telling a colleague Tuesday.

The health care bill is pending before the House energy and commerce committee, which Hill sits on. The sit-down with Obama hasn’t changed his mind on the package yet, Hill said, as he wants some of the spending in the bill curbed.

“While I believe the meeting was very productive, we still have a long way to go in reshaping this health care bill to meet these goals,” he said.

To make matters more difficult for Obama, several governors including tenured Democratic state leaders are concerned the costs of the plan could end up being passed beyond the federal level.

“They’ve ruled out politically several of the sources of additional money that would come along. The governors are obviously in open revolt about the notion of just laying it on them, and rightly so,” said Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen, a Democrat, following last weekend’s National Governors Association meeting.

“If you can’t pass a tax, you can’t do it, I guess. There’s no free lunches in the world here.”

— Reports from the Associated Press contributed to this story.