ORLANDO -- Use tax credits to pay for health insurance policies? Cover everyone one way or another, including through insurance that federal employees get? Can there be any common agreement about how to reform healthcare in America?

That's what experts debated Thursday at a unique healthcare conference in Orlando, bringing together conservatives and liberals to discuss where a middle ground could be found for reform.

It won't be easy, because on the surface there seem no common elements between the tax credit proposals of Republican candidate of John McCain and the push for universal coverage made by Democratic candidate Barack Obama.

The conference Thursday, called ''America's Healthcare at Risk: Finding a Cure,'' brought together doctors and economists, professors and politicians and business leaders to discuss finding common ground for healthcare reform.

Pollster Michael Berland told the audience of 200-plus that ''healthcare reform is being advocated by everyone -- and that's where it stops.'' Because there's so much disagreement on what to do.

Tommy Thompson, a Republican and former secretary of Health and Human Services, and former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, a Democrat, said there was some common ground about saving money through moving toward a common platform for information technology, emphasizing prevention and wellness measures, and managing chronic illness.

Both Thompson and Daschle support forming an outside healthcare board.

Some decisions would be easy. ''Health IT will save us north of $100 million a year,'' said John Engler, chief executive of the National Association of Manufacturers,

Much more debate would occur about the Obama proposals, leaving alone those with good employer-based insurance but finding ways to get coverage to the 45 million who are uninsured.

Irwin Redlener, a Columbia University physician who represented Obama at the conference, said the financial disasters of the past few days ''makes an even more compelling case'' for passing healthcare reform assuring Americans they can get insurance.

Andy Stern, head of the Service Employees International Union, agreed. ``This is the time we really need reform.''

But at least one veteran politico thought the down economy would postpone major reform. ''My sense is there are too many knives flying through the air right now,'' said longtime Democratic consultant James Carville in an interview Wednesday night.

He believes America needs a huge reform ''because each of us is one disease away from financial disaster. But the bailout of AIG for $85 billion, $5.3 trillion to pay for mortgages'' will sap a lot of energy and money out of the federal government. He thinks healthcare reform will have to wait for a ``better economy.''

Karl Rove, a longtime conservative strategist, disagreed. He said the Republican healthcare reforms, helping the uninsured with tax credits, didn't need Washington money to work. ''I think it's very sell-able,'' he said in an interview, also Wednesday night, of the McCain proposals.

Seeking a middle ground was Ivan G. Seidenberg, chief executive of Verizon and head of the healthcare group for the Business Roundtable, a group of the country's largest corporations.

Seidenberg said the group was pushing hard for IT measures and national or regional health plans without the complexities of state-by-state regulation. But the group had come to recognize that everyone needs to have health coverage and would like the government to mandate that each individual have a health plan. If they could not afford it, then the government would subsidize them.

How that subsidy should be paid for is a matter of debate at the roundtable. ''We fight over how you do that,'' Seidenberg said.

Also on the program was Gov. Charlie Crist, who talked about his Cover Florida plan, which is meant to offer cheap health coverage of the state's 3.8 million uninsured. The plan, scheduled to start next year, will offer reduced benefits but will be available to all. The state is now collecting bids for the plan.

Nine insurers have submitted proposals, said Crist, who believes coverage should be available for about $150 a month.

Crist said the Florida plan was passed with broad bipartisan support. He said perhaps the states should take the lead in healthcare reform. ``There's such a difficulty getting anything done in Washington.''

The conference was co-sponsored by the White House Writers Group, a consulting firm made up of former speechwriters for Ronald Reagan and George Bush, and West Wing Writers, made up of former speech writers of Bill Clinton.

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