President Barack Obama said he can help pay for his health-care reforms, following the example of Harry S Truman, by finding waste and fraud in government spending.

Bill Greenblatt | UPI

President Barack Obama removes his suit jacket as he speaks to supporters about  health-care reform at St. Charles High School.

Preaching to a loud friendly crowd of about 400 invited guests in a gym at St. Charles high school Wednesday, the president thanked them for the warm weather, doffed his coat, rolled up his sleeves and said improper spending on Medicare and Medicaid costs the government nearly $100 billion a year -- more than the Department of Education and the Small Business Administration combined.

To find find and eliminate such costs, Obama said he had signed an order to launch private audits that should cut what government spends wrongly and redirect those dollars to more productive health-care spending.

He said paying that kind of money is like spending to repair a house that is leaking energy and is inefficient in other ways -- it's an investment that pays off in the long run.

"The same thing is true of your health-care system," he said. "We've got leaks everywhere and you're paying for it, directly or indirectly." And he denounced what he called scare tactics used by opponents of his plan.

"By saving billions of dollars and reining in waste and inefficiency," Obama said, "we will be able to assure Medicare's solvency for an additional decade."

Several times, the president said, "Here's the bottom line, St. Charles," as he ticked off the three basic features of his health care proposal:

• Ending the worst practices of the insurance industry,
• Giving all Americans the same access to quality care as members of Congress get,
• Bringing down the spiraling costs of health care

On that last topic, Obama compared Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., who stood beaming in the front row behind him, to Truman's World War II efforts to ferret out waste in military contracts. Saying that McCaskill "she just pinches those pennies," Obama noted that she had helped create an online database to keep track of government contracts.

"We'll be able to see before any new contract is awarded: Does this company play by the rules."

Insisting that Congress take an up-or-down vote on health care, the president said that the whole point of his plan is to make the U.S. system of medicine fairer and more rational.

"I don’t believe we should give either the government or the insurance companies more control over health care in America," he said.  "I want to give you more control over health care in America." 

And to those who say the time isn't right for health-care reform, that it's time to start over, Obama replied:

"We can’t accept the status quo.  We can’t accept the same old/same old.  I won’t accept it.  Claire McCaskill won’t accept it.  Not when it comes to how we manage taxpayer dollars.  Not when it comes to how our health-care system works.  Not when it comes to meeting the difficult challenges that we face."   

Before the speech, small knots of people gathered outside the high school, including Mac Macintyre of St. Charles. He waved a "Don't Tread on Me" flag and wore a kilt that he said was from the Macintyre clan. He said that his family had come to the United States "to get away from the Brits and taxation for the crown."

He said his 23-year-old son just got $1,100 worth of blood tests even though he's healthy and contends that's the kind of abuse plus obesity and unwed mothers that are contributing to costs and must be solved.

"Obama has a great vocabulary," Macintyre said, "but there is one word he doesn't have in his vocabulary: incentives. He just wants to divide the pie, not grow the pie. He said said he wanted to be post political, but he's the most political president I've ever seen. Thank God he's only going to have one term."

On the opposite corner a small table was set up selling such Obama memorabilia as buttons and signs.

Across the street from the gym where Obama was going to speak a small group of people stood with signs on both sides of the issue. Signs for Obama's program said things like "Jesus for Obama's health care" and "Food or health care, don't make us choose. Vote yes" Signs against included "Will Obama Care work as well as the stimulus?" and "Spreading the wealth = THEFT!"

It's combatting what could be seen as theft that was a key part of Obama's speech: explaining how expanded use of the recapture audits could mean a return of $2 billion or more over the next three years, which the White House said is double the current amount of projected recovered costs.

"Washington is a place where tax dollars are often treated like Monopoly money, bartered and traded, divvied up among lobbyists and special interests," Obama said, in advance remarks released by the White House. "And it has been a place where waste -- even billions of dollars in waste -- is accepted as the price of doing business.

"Well, I don't accept business as usual. And the American people don't accept it either, especially when one of the most pressing challenges we face is reining in long-term deficits with threaten to leave our children a mountain of debt."

Earlier in the day, to bolster the points in the president's speech, the White House released a fact sheet that said that in 2009, $54 billion of the $98 billion in tax dollars improperly paid to individuals, organizations and contractors come from Medicare and Medicaid.

A pilot program run by Medicare in California, New York and Texas from 2005 to 2008 recaptured $900 million in improper payments. A presidential memorandum will direct all federal departments and agencies to intensify their use of the recapture audits.

In addition to the memorandum, the White House also expressed support for the Improper Payments Elimination and Recovery Act, bipartisan legislation sponsored by Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., and others, that would expand the ability of government agencies to pay for specialized audits with recaptured payments.

The incentives for private auditors to uncover waste and fraud in government health programs are the latest administrative initiative in its drive to boost public support for its reform plan. In Philadelphia on Monday, his target was the insurance companies. Business groups have begun a counterattack, with a multimillion-dollar advertising campaign urging rejection of the legislation that it says is too expensive.

The White House has said it hopes the House will vote on a Senate-approved reform plan by March 18, when the president leaves for an overseas trip. Then, both houses of Congress would vote on changes to the bill that would send it to Obama for his signature.