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President Barack Obama said on Tuesday he firmly believed that a government-run health insurance plan "made sense" in a broader overhaul of the U.S. healthcare system, and that private insurers should find ways to compete for clients.

“I need a crash cart, stat!” The political prospects for major U.S. healthcare reform have taken a decided turn for the worse in recent days (at least from the point of view of many Democrats). And you don’t need to be some totally plugged-in Washington insider to understand that. Just take a look-see at the stock market performance of industry players such as Aetna, Cigna, UnitedHealth Group, and WellPoint. Shares have been trending higher of late. What’s been slowly dawning on Wall Street is that the legislative process in Washington is unlikely to produce a national public health insurance option...

Democrats are becoming bolder about their idea that middle-class familes get the option of joining a government insurance plan in any overhaul of the health care system. Their fervor carries a risk. Liberals, citing polls that show support for a public plan, say they are increasingly frustrated with negotiations to make the idea more palatable to Republicans. Moderates, however, warn that abandoning the talks could jeopardize efforts to draft a bill that can pass a closely divided Senate. "It is important not to draw lines in the sand and rule out options before they are fully explored," Sen. Kent Conrad,...

President Obama dusted off a campaign slogan on Monday, sharply dismissing those who have expressed skepticism that the nation’s health care system will be overhauled by Congress this year. “Yes we can,” Mr. Obama said. “We are going to get this done.” In an appearance in the Diplomatic Reception Room of the White House, Mr. Obama praised an agreement reached last week by drug companies to help close a cap in Medicare’s prescription drug coverage. He said the pharmaceutical industry’s pledge to spend $80 billion over the next decade to reduce the cost of drugs would pay for a portion...

Good Morning America's Diane Sawyer popped up on Sunday's Reliable Sources and swore that ABC's much-scrutinized health care special with President Obama "won't be an infomercial." She also seriously touted the objectivity of the network, cheering, "I know that our network has worked very, very hard to be completely-completely responsible and fair and serious about big issues."

A headline in today’s edition of Roll Call summarizes the health care debate this week: “More Hurdles for Health Care.” Democrats struggled with their various health care proposals last week in the wake of inconvenient reports that the two health care bills in the Senate would likely cost in excess of $1 trillion and would fail to cover all uninsured Americans. This week, more problems are surfacing as Americans get a better look at what President Obama and Democrats are proposing to do. First, Democrats may have problems with each other when they attempt to merge bills being written in...

President Obama has indicated he wants a health-care bill on his desk sometime around October...the evidence is overwhelming that we must end the private insurance company domination of health care in our country and move toward a publicly funded, single-payer, Medicare-for-all approach.

After Losing $20 Million in Equipment, Federal Health-Care Agency Won $500 Million Earmark in Stimulus; Agency’s HQ Had 10 Pieces of IT Equipment Per Worker Friday, June 19, 2009 By Monica Gabriel (CNSNews.com) - The $787 billion stimulus bill that President Obama signed in February awarded the Indian Health Service with an earmark for $500 million in new funding, including $85 million specifically set aside for “health information technology activities,” even though a Government Accountability Office audit released the previous June concluded that mismanagement of the IHS had allowed $15.8 million worth of equipment to be lost or stolen between...

House Democrats on Friday answered President Obama’s call for a sweeping overhaul of the health care system, unveiling a bill that they said would cover 95 percent of Americans. But they said they did not know how much it would cost and had not decided how to pay for it. The proposal would establish a new public health insurance plan to compete with private plans. Republicans and insurance companies strenuously oppose such an entity, saying it could lead to a government takeover of health care. The draft bill would require all Americans to carry health insurance. Most employers would have...

President Obama and Congress and pushing 'reform' that will move America closer to a government-run system like Canada or Britain. If they succeed, most Americans will no longer be able to keep the insurance they have. Instead the will be forced into a government-run health insurance market.

One doesn't have to look much further than that to see that this is nothing but another ObamaBoondoggle that we cannot afford and do not need. There is NOTHING, I repeat "NOTHING" in our constitution or the bible for that matter that says anyone anywhere is entitled to health insurance, especially FREE health insurance for people who smoke all day and night, slop up next to bars day in and day out, shove fast food down their fat gullets everyday of the week and refuse to take care of themselves as most of America does or has done. Like this...

The final price tag for that effort could top $1 trillion, with cuts to Medicare and Medicaid covering the rest of the cost. The tax options include: • Increasing the price of soda and other sugary drinks by 10 cents a can. • Applying a potential 2 percent income tax increase to single taxpayers earning more than $200,000 a year and households earning more than $250,000. • A new employer payroll tax could target 3 percent of employers' health care expenditures. • Taxing employer-provided health insurance benefits above certain levels — a less likely option but one that still is...

House Democrats introduced a draft healthcare reform bill Friday they say would extend coverage to 95 percent of Americans. “We’ll make sure that at the end of the day, we have a health insurance bill that’ll cover almost all Americans, will hold down healthcare costs, that [will] provide affordable, good-quality health insurance coverage – and we’re going to pay for it,” said House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Calif.). Though the Democrats have established a clear target for expanding coverage, they acknowledged that questions remain about how to pay for the bill, which will require a combination of...

Dr. David Scheiner took care of Obama for 22 years. But they don't see eye-to-eye on how to fix the health care system. David Scheiner, an internist based in the Chicago neighborhood of Hyde Park, has a diverse practice of lower-income adults from the nearby housing projects mixed with famous patients like U.S. Sen. Carol Mosely Braun, the late writer Studs Terkel and, most notably, President Barack Obama. Scheiner, 71, was Obama's doctor from 1987 until he entered the White House; he vouched for the then-candidate's "excellent health" in a letter last year. He's still an enthusiastic Obama supporter, but...

Would Obamacare Discriminate?June 18, 2009 BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Bob in Auburn, Massachusetts, nice to have you with us here on Open Line Friday on Thursday. Hi. CALLER: Rush, glad to get to talk to you. Big fan. RUSH: Thank you. CALLER: Big, big fan. You know, I want to run the health care thing by you. I think people are missing the whole point here and maybe you're not, because I try to listen as much as I can but sometimes I don't. Obama really doesn't care about health care at all. He doesn't care if it costs $10 trillion....

I’m surprised but I shouldn’t be. Universal health care was The One’s top domestic priority during the campaign and he won by a sizable margin, ergo it’s natural to assume that America’s readier than it’s ever been to socialize medicine. But consider: In ‘93 the Cold War was over, the economy was coming out of a recession considerably weaker than this one, and we were 15 years further removed from facing Medicare doomsday than we are now. Fast forward to 2009, with the U.S. stuck in two wars and Obamatopia landing us trillions in the red and it’s only natural...

ABC News' Sunlen Miller reports: In the heat of the debate on the Hill over health care reform, President Obama spoke at a fundraiser tonight for the Democratic party, calling out the critics for “tinkering” around the edge of health care reform with their own plans. “I sincerely hope that there are members of both parties who will participate in reform,” the President said, “But for those who simply criticize without offering new ideas of their own, I have to ask —what’s your answer?” The feisty President said it’s not acceptable to “pretend” that offering “meager tax cuts” is a...

Having practiced medicine for over 30 years, Congressman Paul gives his perspective on the past and future of medicine in this country, and the effects of government and special interests on qualit... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=foXQbmZxWYY

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - He remains personally popular, but President Barack Obama is starting to see signs that some of his economic policies are causing doubts among many Americans. Two polls published on Thursday illustrate the political risk Obama faces as he turns his attention toward an overhaul of the U.S. healthcare system, an issue so contentious that previous attempts have failed to address high cost and availability issues. The New York Times/CBS News poll put his job approval rating at 63 percent, an impressive number given the high 9.4 percent unemployment rate. In spite of his popularity, the polls showed...