Health Care Bill | featured news

What's all the fuss about? After all the noise over Democrats' push for a government insurance plan to compete with private carriers, ...

Support of government-backed insurance plan is a key concession to liberals, but the Senate provision would also give states the right to opt out.

Health care legislation taking shape in the House carries a price tag of at least $1 trillion over a decade, significantly higher than the target President Obama has set ...

The Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, has told colleagues that he may include a government-run health insurance plan in a health care bill he will soon take to the Senate floor.

Their plan is estimated below Obama's $900-billion price tag. House Democrats are aiming to scale back the cost of their healthcare bill below President Obama's price tag by giving the government a strong hand in selling insurance in competition with the private market.

As Democratic congressional leaders and White House officials work to shape health care bills that will go to the House and Senate floors, a new Washington Post-ABC News poll shows that support for a government-run health plan to compete with private insurers has rebounded from its summertime lows and now wins clear majority support from the public.

Measures pending in Congress push insurers to keep down costs and cover all regardless of health. Despite growing frustration with the way health insurers deny medical treatments, major healthcare bills pending in Congress would give patients little new power to challenge those sometimes life-and-death decisions.

A second Republican senator signaled Wednesday she's open to voting for sweeping health care legislation this year, putting President Barack Obama closer to a historic achievement that has eluded generations of Democratic leaders.

The Senate Finance Committee passed a long-awaited $829 billion health care bill Tuesday by a 14-9 vote. Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, was the lone committee member to cross party lines, breaking with other Republicans to vote for the measure. All the committee's Democrats supported the bill.

The White House on Monday blasted a report from the health insurance industry that said Senate healthcare legislation would lead to increases in annual insurance premiums of as much as $4,000 by 2019.