For a new approach to America's health care to succeed, it must, according to President Barack Obama, allow people to get the care they need, while also ensuring quality of care; his statements were made in response to a question posed during a "town hall meeting" held last week and hosted by ABC News.

"If we are smart, we should be able to design a system in which people still have choices of doctors and choices of plans that make sure that the necessary treatment is provided, but we don't have a huge amount of waste in the system, that we are providing adequate coverage for all people, and that we are driving down costs over the long term," said Obama, conceding that there are no easy fixes to the issue, which has been on presidential agendas for decades. "If we don't drive down costs, then we're not going to be able to achieve all those other things."

When discussing costs, Obama referenced his proposed financial incentives to clinicians, decreasing fee-for-service pay structures and increasing use of health IT systems.

Still, with a price tag estimated to be at minimum $1 trillion, costs could be paid —at least in part—through taxes in nonmedical areas, according to an article in The Wall Street Journal. In addition to the Obama proposal to limit the value of itemized deductions for "upper-income" taxpayers, the article quotes Sen Kent Conrad (D-ND) as indicating a current proposal "to require employers to pick up the tab for their employees who enroll in Medicaid or purchase insurance through a government-run healthcare exchange would raise another $300 billion."