Health Care Reform | featured news

As the U.S. Supreme Court ponders the fate of healthcare reform in the current election year, a study released on Thursday shows that one in four working-age Americans went without insurance at some point in 2011, often as a result of unemployment and other job changes.

Rep. Barney Frank , D-Mass., said he advised President Obama against taking up health care reform following a special election in 2010 that changed Democrats' fortunes in the Senate, saying that he should have instead turned his focus to financial reform.

Six years after Mitt Romney signed into law a signature health care reform package in Massachusetts, it's his chief political rival, Barack Obama, who's celebrating. President Obama's re-election team on Thursday released a three-minute web video marking the sixth anniversary of the law that's now known as "Romneycare," reminding voters that the signature effort in Massachusetts helped inspire Mr. Obama's landmark legislation.

"In another attempt to re-fight the battles of the past, one former Bush administration official is wrongly claiming that some of the savings in the Affordable Care Act are 'double-counted' and that the law actually increases the deficit," said Jeanne Lambrew, a deputy assistant to the president for health policy. "This claim is false."

President Obama’s landmark health-care initiative, long touted as a means to control costs, will actually add more than $340 billion to the nation’s budget woes over the next decade, according to a new study by a member of the board that oversees Medicare financing.

The White House was forced on the defensive on Wednesday as it sought to explain controversial remarks President Barack Obama made earlier in the week about the Supreme Court's review of his signature healthcare reform law. "What he did was make an unremarkable observation about 80 years of Supreme Court history," White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters during a White House briefing dominated by the topic.

Obama expressed confidence on Monday that the Court would not take an "unprecedented, extraordinary step" by ov

There was something rather unsettling in President Obama’s preemptive strike on the Supreme Court at Monday’s news conference. “I’d just remind conservative commentators that for years what we’ve heard is the biggest problem on the bench is judicial activism or a lack of judicial restraint — that an unelected group of people would somehow overturn a duly constituted and passed law,” Obama said. “Well, here’s a good example. And I’m pretty confident that this court will recognize that, and not take that step.”

President Barack Obama weighed in Monday on last week's Supreme Court arguments about health care reform, saying he expected the justices to rule the act is constitutional.

As the U.S. Supreme Court considers the fate of the federal Affordable Care Act, legislation in California could pave the way for a state substitute, if needed. As doubts grow about the survival of the federal healthcare law, state officials are considering ways to keep key elements of the legislation alive in California.

The Supreme Court left little doubt during last week's marathon arguments over President Barack Obama's health care overhaul that it has scant faith in Congress' ability to get anything done.