WASHINGTON – White House officials said Wednesday that the Senate proposal for healthcare reform can contain escalating healthcare costs.

In a conference call with reporters, Peter Orszag, director of the Office of Management and Budget, and Nancy-Ann DeParle, director of the White House Office of Health Reform, expressed their support for the Senate bill that is up for debate and amendment next week.

According to Orszag, the bill's four pillars are system delivery reform, budget-neutrality, the establishment of a Medicare Commission that will continually implement proposals to improve quality and an excise tax on expensive private healthcare plans.

DeParle said she is "very pleased with the way the bill is shaping up for cost containment."

Other elements of delivery system reform include advancement of healthcare IT, funding to research and establish evidence-based care and changing incentives so that care is based on quality over quantity

Budget neutrality must be a part of any healthcare reform bill the White House would sign, Orszag said. The Senate bill is designed to reduce the federal deficit over the next two decades, he added.

DeParle said the nation hasn't seen any cost containment in healthcare spending since the passage of the Balanced Budget Act of 1997, which made Medicare solvent by 2001.

Just focusing on Medicare and cost containment, she said, the Senate bill proposes a 6 percent reduction in spending. "This is a lot," she said, compared to the past few years, which have seen no cost containment and the addfition of the Medicare prescription drug benefit, which wasn't paid for.

DeParle said she expects the Senate bill, coupled with increased efforts to prevent Medicare fraud, waste and abuse, would cause "broader and deeper" cuts to healthcare spending than anticipated.

Orszag said the reforms now under consideration by Congress could have greater impact than ever before.