Bill Clinton rallies Senate Democrats on healthcare

By John Whitesides and Donna Smith

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Former President Bill Clinton visited the U.S. Capitol on Tuesday to urge Senate Democrats to quickly pass a broad healthcare overhaul, but a party leader said final action could spill into next year.

With the clock ticking on President Barack Obama's hopes of signing a healthcare bill by the end of the year, Clinton told Democratic senators it was economically imperative that they pass the long-delayed measure.

"People hire us to come to work in places like this to solve problems, to stand up and do it," Clinton, who failed in his own 1994 effort to revamp the healthcare system, said he told senators in the closed-door session.

"I just urged them to resolve their differences and pass a bill," he told reporters.

The overhaul has been stalled in the Senate for a month, but gained new urgency on Saturday when the House of Representatives passed a bill designed to extend coverage to most Americans and bar practices such as denying insurance to those with pre-existing conditions.

Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid and his No. 2, Dick Durbin, said they hoped to bring the Senate's version to the floor next week and have the first procedural vote on whether to open debate.

But Durbin said it would be difficult to meet Obama's goal of signing a bill on reforming the $2.5 trillion healthcare system by the end of the year.

"I hope so, but just count the days," Durbin told reporters when asked if they could meet Obama's deadline. "Our goal is to make sure it is out of the Senate this year."

That would mean negotiations to reconcile the House and Senate versions would occur in January, and each chamber would have to pass the merged bill before Obama could sign it into law.

"I wish we could complete it this year. But if we don't, we will get it done," Durbin said.

The overhaul would lead to the biggest changes in the healthcare system -- which accounts for one-sixth of the U.S. economy -- since the 1965 creation of the Medicare government health insurance program for the elderly.

Many of its biggest provisions, however, would not kick in until 2013, pushing its full implementation beyond Obama's expected re-election campaign in 2012.

CLINTON ENCOURAGES DEMOCRATS

Clinton said he told the senators there was no perfect bill and "the worst thing to do is nothing."

"There is no perfect solution because it is a big open organic system that will have to be changed repeatedly over the next four or five years, but it's important to make a beginning," Clinton told reporters