WASHINGTON — President-elect Barack Obama and his team have signaled that they plan to work jointly with Congress to overhaul the healthcare system, rather than produce a separate White House bill that would be sent to Capitol Hill, according to people involved in healthcare strategy discussions. The Obama team is determined to avoid the mistakes of the early 1990s, when the Clinton White House created a healthcare policy team that had more than 500 members and spent months secretly developing a 1,342-page proposal with minimal input from Congress. A lack of investment among congressional leaders helped doom the bill, which never even went to a vote. Obama and his team – headed by former Senate majority leader Tom Daschle, who will serve as a bridge to Congress – have already begun privately engaging with congressional leaders and have emphasized that they intend to work more collaboratively on healthcare than the Clintons did, said the two leading Democratic senators on healthcare reform. ‘Congress did not want to be told what to do,’ said Max Baucus, the Senate Finance Committee chairman, whose committee will determine whether a healthcare overhaul is fiscally feasible. ‘They’re very cognizant of that and they […]