President Obama rallies health overhaul supporters; Reports by Dems and GOP offer very different views on law's impacts

In a Friday morning speech, Obama was expected to offer a message to "fire up" health law supporters. Reports indicate a White House report will detail the positive effect the health law will have on health insurance premiums. Meanwhile, however, Republicans are citing a report of their own that shows the law's negative repercussions for child-only health plans.

Politico: Barack Obama Fires Up The Health Team
President Barack Obama may have said "let's fix it and move on" in his State of the Union address, but the president is sending messages that he is ready to roll up his sleeves and keep fighting the health care battle as long as he needs to. Obama will address the annual conference for Families USA today armed with a new HHS report that shows health insurance premiums will be 14-20 percent lower in 2014 than they would have been without the law, Politico has learned (Nocera and Haberkorn, 1/28).

The Hill: Obama Pledges To Improve Health Law, But Dems Offer Few Details
President Obama and Democrats are offering few specifics when it comes to changing the nation's health care law. Democrats are trying to recast themselves as a party that's listening to voters after their mid-term shellacking, and is willing to change Obama's signature domestic achievement in order to improve it. Obama in his State of the Union address expressed a willingness to tackle medical malpractice reform, and also repeated his call to eliminate a tax reporting provision deeply unpopular with business (Pecquet and Millman, 1/28).

Politico: Child-Only Health Plans Endangered
Health insurers in 34 states have stopped selling child-only insurance policies as a result of the health reform law, and the market continues to destablize. According to a survey of state insurance departments by Republican Senate committee staff and obtained by Politico, states that have seen carriers exit the market include those that have been ardent supporters of the health reform law, like California and Oregon. Twenty states now have no insurers offering child-only policies (Kliff and Feder, 1/27).

The Associated Press: Did Obama Administration Stretch Health Care Stat?
Without President Barack Obama's health care law, as many as 129 million Americans — half of those under age 65 — could be denied coverage or charged more because of a pre-existing medical condition. The new estimate by the Health and Human Services Department is more than twice as high as a figure that supporters of the law were using last year. It just might need an asterisk (Alonso-Zaldivar, 1/28).