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Obama, Dem leaders confident about health reform legislation

The Wall Street Journal / Dow Jones: "House Democratic leaders expressed confidence Friday that they would have enough votes to pass health-care legislation, picking up one new 'yes' vote and promising that they would resolve lingering concerns raised by undecided Democrats." A House vote is planned for Sunday.

20 Mar 2010

KHN columns explore how abortion funding issues are factoring into health reform

In one Kaiser Health News column, Jessica Arons writes: "In an attempt to keep health reform from being torpedoed by the ever-contentious topic of abortion, advocates and opponents of abortion rights were expected to agree that legislation would preserve the "status quo" on abortion law and not be used to advance or restrict abortion rights.

20 Mar 2010

CBO numbers buoy Democrats eyeing Sunday health reform vote

Democrats unveiled a health overhaul reconciliation bill the Congressional Budget Office says will cost $940 billion but also cut the deficit by $138 billion over the next 10 years.

20 Mar 2010

'Cadillac' insurance plans explained

Kaiser Health News staff writer Jenny Gold, in collaboration with NPR, provides an update to explain the latest on how these high-cost insurance plans are treated in the latest health reform package.

20 Mar 2010

GOP trying to derail, challenge health reform legislation

The Wall Street Journal: "Republicans are looking beyond Sunday's expected vote on the Democrats' health-care overhaul to focus on strategies for striking back should it pass, ranging from challenges to the measure by individual states to a national repeal campaign. ... GOP leaders hope at a minimum that they can energize conservative activists and turn the electorate against the Democrats in the crucial period after the law's enactment, when both parties would be fighting to define it in the public's mind before the November elections."

20 Mar 2010

Today's OpEds: Wash Post, Economist support health bill, others articulate opposition

But if legislators are asked to cast an up-or-down vote in the next few days, our advice would be to vote yes. With trepidation, we would say that the benefits of acting outweigh the risks (3/19).

20 Mar 2010

First Edition: March 19, 2010

The headlines reflect yesterday's flurry of activity as House Democratic Leaders unveiled their $940 billion health-care compromise bill and steamed toward a Sunday vote. All the while, Republican leaders plotted was to stall this progress and nullify the measure.

19 Mar 2010

New summit: Health care reform for children in California

“Why California’s Children Need Health Reform,” with special video remarks by U.S. Congresswoman Anna Eshoo.

19 Mar 2010

Judicial Watch files lawsuit against HHS

Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption, announced today that it filed a lawsuit against the Obama Department of Health and Human Services to obtain documents related to President Obama's closed-door health care meetings with Vice President Biden, HHS Secretary Sebelius, Vice President Biden, Speaker Pelosi, Majority Leader Reid and union officials in violation of a campaign promise to broadcast all health care discussions on C-SPAN.

19 Mar 2010

Congress should cast final votes to get comprehensive health care reform enacted into law, ACP

The American College of Physicians, representing 129,000 internal medicine physician and medical student members, said today that Congress should cast the final votes needed to get comprehensive health care reform enacted into law. Without reform, ACP said, tens of millions of Americans stand to lose access to affordable health care and out-of-control spending will trigger an unprecedented fiscal and budgetary crisis.

19 Mar 2010

Democrats seeking health care votes get 'yes' from 200 groups

Kaiser Health News staff writer Andrew Villegas reports on organizations which announced support yesterday for the pending health reform proposal.

19 Mar 2010

CHC: Passage of President Obama's health care reform proposal would improve quality of life for Latinos

The Congressional Hispanic Caucus today called for passage of President Obama's health care reform proposal, saying that it would greatly improve the quality of life for millions of Latinos. The measure is expected to expand coverage to 8.8 million Latinos, or 60% of the currently uninsured Hispanic community.

19 Mar 2010

Vote count: Obama's lobbying convinces some holdouts to back overhaul, but others still resist

The Washington Post: "President Obama claimed his first convert" - Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, - "on health-care reform Wednesday, as senior Democrats, labor unions and an array of interest groups intensified their efforts to sway wavering lawmakers before a climactic vote in the House this weekend" (Montgomery and Kane, 3/18).

19 Mar 2010

House Democrats continue push for weekend House vote on health reform measure

House Democratic leaders continued efforts to pick-up support for health reform in the House while also tinkering around the edges of the overhaul legislative package -- all in anticipation of a Sunday vote in the House.

19 Mar 2010

A right to health care? wrong!

Years of debating liberal friends and colleagues has brought me to an understanding: This question is at the core of the debate. The absurd notion of a “right” to health care underlies the movement towards socialized medicine. If this right does exist, it becomes a moral imperative to guarantee it for all, i.e. “universal coverage.”

18 Mar 2010

As the nation focuses on quality and cost of health care, AMA-convened PCPI celebrates milestone and looks to future

Celebrating its 10 year anniversary today at its meeting in the nation’s capital, the AMA-convened Physician Consortium for Performance Improvement (PCPI) highlighted its achievements to date and took a proactive look at future efforts to measure and improve the quality of patient care.

18 Mar 2010

Reforming healthcare

President Obama and his chief allies in Congress are at the final stages of structuring the historic year-long process of reforms in the health care legislation with changes in subsidies, taxes and assurance of better health care plans.

18 Mar 2010

Unemployed and uninsured in California

One fourth of the adult and children population of California have no access to insurance. 6.4 million people were uninsured in 2007 and figures jumped up to 8.2 million in just 2 years. Recession and unemployment was thought to be the major contributing factor according to the investigators from UCLA's Center for Health Policy Research.

18 Mar 2010

BMA Scotland comment on the publication of the Patient Rights

“BMA Scotland supports the Scottish Government’s aim to encourage a stronger sense of public ownership of the NHS and the renewed commitment to provide a service which is publicly funded and owned, free at the point of delivery. As such, we welcome the commitment to articulate the rights and responsibilities of all those using and providing NHS services.

18 Mar 2010

First Edition: March 18, 2010

Today's headlines indicate that Democrats are inching closer to securing the votes necessary to pass their health bill while the GOP is planning steps to bottle neck the measure's progress.

18 Mar 2010