President Bush is causing consternation among the putative presidential candidates in both parties by letting it be known that he intends to encourage Congress to pass a bipartisan universal health care plan before he leaves the White House in January 2009.

The president’s ambition to continue pressing for a bipartisan way to provide universal health care emerged on the same day the leading candidate for the Democratic nomination, Senator Clinton, announced her latest compulsory health care proposals, and a day before Mrs. Clinton’s closest challenger, Senator Obama of Illinois, spelled out his scheme.

Most of the Republican candidates also have declared that as president they would introduce health care reforms that would embrace all or the majority of Americans.

The establishment of a congressionally approved universal health care scheme before the presidential election next fall would likely spike the guns of the Democratic candidates, many of whom have sought to make health a central plank of their election platform.

And if Mr. Bush succeeds in striking a health care deal with congressional Democratic leaders by November 2008, the Democratic presidential nominee could lose an important edge over his or her Republican rival. Even if the president does not succeed in finding a compromise, an extended debate over how best to provide health care for all Americans, and recrimination against those members of Congress who have stood in his way, may defuse an issue that otherwise is expected to favor the Democrats.

In a private meeting with the editorial board of USA Today on Monday, Mr. Bush’s health and human services secretary, Michael Leavitt, let it be known that the president would veto the current health legislation before Congress and would then press for a bipartisan universal health care plan more to his liking.

Mr. Leavitt said the president would veto a Democratic plan in Congress that would extend the State Children’s Health Insurance Program to eligible adults, costing an estimated $35 billion in taxpayer subsidies.

When Mr. Bush implements the veto, Mr. Leavitt said, he will urge Congress to join him in finding a way to extend health coverage to all Americans. “He’d like to see the larger debate begin,” Mr. Leavitt said, according to USA Today. “The very best opportunity we have may well be in the next 15 months.”

Those who are seeking to replace Mr. Bush have been working under the assumption that the president had given up on trying to promote his favored two-element solution to providing health care for all, as announced in his State of the Union address in January.

The president at that time proposed offsetting the cost of private health insurance with a flat rate tax deduction to make insurance more affordable and, in the words of a White House fact sheet, “to level the playing field so those who buy health insurance on their own get the same tax advantage as those who get health insurance through their jobs.”

The proposed tax deduction would be $7,500 for a single person and $15,000 for a family buying health care, and would be available to everyone, whether they bought insurance through their employer or on their own.

For those who still could not afford coverage, the president suggested a system whereby states would be encouraged to help low-income and hard-to-insure citizens buy private insurance in exchange for federal funding.

Although the president is pushing for the reauthorization of the existing so-called SCHIP program to provide government-funded health care for low-income children, the proposals currently making their way through the Democratic Congress would extend the eligibility of government insurance to millions who have good incomes and already buy private insurance.

According to a briefing by Mr. Leavitt in June, if the changes to the SCHIP program are passed, “families making over $81,000 a year would have children eligible for public assistance. It would mean that 71% of all children in this country would be eligible for a program that was designed for low-income children.”

According to remarks at the same meeting by the director of the National Economic Council, Allan Hubbard, the president is prepared to make some alterations to his plan. He would back either a flat rate tax deduction or a refundable credit, or a combination of the two, supplemented with a plan to give governors and state Legislatures more flexibility in the way they use federal grants to help the chronically ill and the poor buy private health insurance.

Since the State of the Union address, Mr. Leavitt, at the president’s request, has discussed health care for everyone with every state governor. The secretary also said a number of Democratic members of Congress have already warmed to Mr. Bush’s ideas on health.

If the president does not manage to persuade congressional leaders to join him in finding a way to provide universal health care, the Democratic candidates are offering a range of plans that, according to polls, would find favor with voters.

A Pew poll this year found that two out of three Americans backed government-financed health insurance for all.