Obama stumps for healthcare reform

As President Obama traveled to sell a government-run insurance plan as essential to healthcare reform, Senate negotiators began to explore a possible bipartisan compromise modeled after rural cooperatives. Creating a "public option" to compete with private coverage has emerged as a significant hurdle as Congress begins to debate legislation to restructure the nation's healthcare system. But many lawmakers who are skeptical of a federal plan expressed interest in an alternative proposal to create the member-run healthcare cooperatives.