Search

WASHINGTON -- When Congress passed legislation requiring nearly all Americans to obtain health insurance, Randy E. Barnett, a passionate libertarian who teaches law at Georgetown, argued that the bill was unconstitutional. Many of his colleagues, on both the left and the right, dismissed the idea as ridiculous -- and still do. But over the past two years, through his prolific writings, speaking engagements and television appearances, Professor Barnett has helped drive the question of the health care law's constitutionality from the fringes of academia into the mainstream of American legal debate and right onto the agenda of the United States Supreme Court. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

WASHINGTON -- The battle over health care is poised to move swiftly from Congress back to the country as Democrats, Republicans and a battery of interest groups race to define the legislation and dig in for long-term political and legal fights. President Obama plans to open a new campaign this week to persuade skeptical Americans that the bill holds immediate benefits for them and addresses the nation's shaky fiscal condition. Republicans said they would seek to repeal the measure, challenge its constitutionality and coordinate efforts in statehouses to block its implementation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

WASHINGTON -- The battle over health care is poised to move swiftly from Congress back to the country as Democrats, Republicans and a battery of interest groups race to define the legislation and dig in for long-term political and legal fights. President Obama plans to open a new campaign this week to persuade skeptical Americans that the bill holds immediate benefits for them and addresses the nation's shaky fiscal condition. Republicans said they would seek to repeal the measure, challenge its constitutionality and coordinate efforts in statehouses to block its implementation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

WASHINGTON -- President Obama, beginning a full-court press for his health care overhaul, met Thursday with insurance industry executives and House Democrats as party leaders on Capitol Hill struggled to figure out whether they could meet the president's timetable for enacting legislation within a few weeks. One day after Mr. Obama vowed to do ''everything in my power'' to get a bill passed, his health secretary, Kathleen Sebelius, convened insurance executives at the White House and pressed them to release actuarial data justifying their rate increases. The president stopped by -- an appearance that was unscheduled, but clearly orchestrated -- to deliver a letter from an Ohio cancer survivor who had dropped her insurance after a 40 percent rate increase. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

WASHINGTON IT is no secret that President Obama desperately wants Congress to pass legislation to overhaul health care. But last month, when Mr. Obama convened Congressional Democratic leaders at the White House for a marathon negotiating session, another priority intervened. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Seeking to avert the collapse of major health care legislation, the White House and Democratic leaders in Congress face a crucial decision about whether to use a procedural maneuver that would allow them to advance the bill despite the loss of their 60-vote majority in the Senate. The maneuver, known as budget reconciliation, could allow President Obama and his party to muscle the legislation through Congress with a simple majority vote in the Senate. But it carries numerous risks, including the possibility of a political backlash against what Republicans would be sure to cast as parliamentary trickery. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

President Obama plans to address a joint session of Congress next week in an effort to rally support for health care legislation as White House officials look for ways to simplify and scale back the major Democratic bills, lower the cost and drop contentious but nonessential elements. Administration officials said Wednesday that Mr. Obama would be more specific than he has been to date about what he wants included in the plan. Doing so amounts to an acknowledgment that the president's prior tactic of laying out broad principles and leaving Congress to fill in the details was no longer working and that Mr. Obama needed to become more personally involved in shaping the outcome. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

WASHINGTON -- House Democrats are inching toward the majority they need to pass health care legislation, giving them added confidence as they work out the last details of the bill and gird for a showdown as soon as this weekend. Behind the scenes, Democratic leaders were still working Wednesday to secure backing for the legislation from among roughly three dozen members of the party whose votes are considered to be in play, even as they awaited a final price tag on the bill from the Congressional Budget Office. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]