It looks like members of the U.S. House of Representatives will have a busy start to their summer, crafting health care reform legislation for President Barack Obama.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) told reporters outside of the White House yesterday (May 13) that legislators are setting a July 31 deadline to pass such legislation, a goal praised by the president.

That’s the kind of urgency and determination that we need to achieve what I believe will be historic legislation,” Obama said. “As I’ve said before, and as all Americans know, our health care system is broken.  It’s unsustainable for families, for businesses.  It is unsustainable for the federal government and state governments.”

The president called ever-escalating health care costs “the most significant driver by far of our long-term debt and our long-term deficits” and without reform “we are not going to be able to get a handle on that.”

Last month, Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) set his own July deadline for introduction of legislation in the Senate to improve the nation’s health system. Baucus’ Senate Finance Committee has held three reform roundtables in May, gathering information from various entities, ranging from insurance to information technology.

Obama noted the importance of getting final legislation passed not only by the House, but its colleagues in the U.S. Senate, this year.

“In the coming weeks and months, I believe that the House and Senate will be engaged in a difficult issue, and I’m committed to building a transparent process to get this moving,” the president said. “But whatever plans emerge, both from the House and the Senate, I do believe that they’ve got to uphold three basic principles:  first, that the rising cost of health care has to be brought down; second, that Americans have to be able to choose their own doctor and their own plan; and third, all Americans have to have quality, affordable health care.”

The three tenets were the same Obama spoke of following a meting May 11 with numerous stakeholders in health care reform, including insurers, doctors and pharmaceutical companies. The group pledged to the president that they will work to enact efficiencies to produce $2 trillion in savings over the next decade.