Obama set to face health care pain

By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Editor - Analysis

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President-elect Barack Obama has promised broad changes to U.S. health care, pledging to bring health insurance to millions of Americans and to spend $50 billion (31 billion pounds) to take American health records electronic, but he must struggle to find the money to do it.

Polls show more than 80 percent of Americans want health care reform. But even with a Democratic-controlled Congress, Obama, who won a solid victory in Tuesday's U.S. election and takes power in January, has hard work ahead of him, health experts agree.

"This isn't the classic crisis that lets someone show his greatness," said Brookings Institution Senior Fellow Henry Aaron.

Aaron noted that Congress will be wary of spending money on anything, having just given a $700 billion stimulus package to the financial industry and struggling with a $455 billion budget deficit.

"It is a bunch of messy problems that really are political minefields," Aaron said in a telephone interview.

Voters put health care reform as their third biggest concern, after the economy and the war in Iraq. Some 47 million people in the United States do not have health insurance.

Obama wants to create a National Health Insurance Exchange to help individuals and small businesses buy private insurance.

He promised to require health care for all children, and expand Medicaid, the government-run health program for the poor, and the State Children's Health Insurance Program or SCHIP.