President Obama needs Congress to consider paying for a health-care overhaul by limiting certain tax deductions for wealthy Americans rather than by taxing employer-provided health benefits, top advisers said yesterday.

The Obama administration stepped up efforts to influence health-care legislation yesterday as advisers David Axelrod and Austan Goolsbee appeared on television talk shows to talk about the issue.

Obama "made a very strong case for the suggestion that he put on the table, which was to cap deductions for high-income Americans, and he urged them to go back and look at that," Axelrod said on CNN's State of the Union.

The efforts to overhaul health care affect a sector that constitutes 17 percent of the U.S. economy. The goal of Democratic supporters is to offer insurance to most of the 46 million uninsured and lower the soaring cost of care.