Obama: healthcare won't hike taxes on middle class

* Obama stresses rooting out waste and abuse from system

* Admits the debate hard, plan has lots of moving parts

* Focus will shift to foreign policy and global economy

WASHINGTON, Sept 20 - President Barack Obama conducted a massive media blitz on Sunday to try to convince more Americans to back a U.S. healthcare overhaul that he and his Democrats are determined to pass despite a lack of Republican support.

Obama appeared on four U.S. television networks to promote his plans, insisting they would not lead to middle-class tax increases as critics suspect, and trying to put an exclamation point on a debate that has lasted months and could be in its final weeks.

A Gallup poll last week found that by 60 percent to 38 percent, Americans do not believe the government can expand healthcare coverage without raising taxes on the middle class or affecting the quality of care.

On CBS' "Face the Nation," Obama insisted he could still keep his campaign pledge not to raise taxes on people making less than $250,000. He said much of the cost of the overhaul, his top domestic priority, could be funded by rooting out waste and abuse from the current system.

"I can still keep that promise because as I've said, about two-thirds of what we've proposed would be from money that's already in the healthcare system but just being spent badly. And as I said before, this is not me making wild assertions," Obama said.

A proposal by Democratic Senator Max Baucus, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, would provide some of the funding by imposing a fee on expensive health insurance policies. It could raise $215 billion over 10 years and pay for a fourth of the cost of a $856 billion plan.

Asked whether insurance companies would pass on the costs of the fee to consumers, Obama said, "Here's the problem, they're passing on those costs to the consumer anyway."

Obama told CNN's "State of the Union" that the average annual healthcare plan cost $13,000 and that most Americans would not be affected by the fee.

Obama's campaign for healthcare has been marked by raucous debate among Americans skeptical of the plan. Republican Representative Joe Wilson of South Carolina had to apologize for shouting "You lie" at Obama during his recent speech to a joint session of the U.S. Congress.

The exchange led former President Jimmy Carter to complain that Obama was a victim of racism, a claim Obama dismissed in the interviews.

"You know, I think that it really has more to do with the fact that there are some people who think government can't do anything. As I said, there's some people who just cynically want to defeat me politically, but there's nothing new about that," Obama told Univision.

Obama, who has devoted dozens of speeches and interviews to healthcare, admitted the debate had been a struggle.

"It's hard," he told CBS. "And there are a lot of moving parts. And so I appreciate the fact that the American people are really cautious about this because it's important to them and the majority of people still have health insurance."

Obama's blitz came just before he departs Washington for a week in New York and Pittsburgh to focus on foreign policy and the global economy.

Obama's overhaul of the $2.5 trillion healthcare industry has been besieged by critics and slowed by intense battles in Congress, where elements of the insurance and healthcare industries have lobbied hard against parts of the plan.

Opinion polls show Americans are divided over the effort, designed to rein in costs, improve care, regulate insurers and expand coverage to many of the 46 million people in the United States who now have none.

The interviews were taped on Friday.