With the U.S. House Budget Committee forwarding a reconciliation health care reform bill to the entire congressional chamber, one Obama Administration official says a final up-or-down vote is “only days away.”

While the Obama Administration is confident that the coming week will produce the first step in a march to victory on health care reform, at least one Republican is saying the way Democrats are fighting for change is “a political kamikaze mission.”

After a call from President Barack Obama to move health reform forward, Democratic leaders are adding fuel to the fire, saying that order can only be fulfilled through budget reconciliation.

While 34 other states have considered or partially passed legislation to ban any federal mandate to secure health insurance coverage, the Virginia General Assembly has passed a bill that is expected to get the signature of the state’s governor.

A number of health reform advocates, including labor groups, plan to protest outside the hotel where a number of top health care executives are scheduled to meet in Washington, D.C., Tuesday (March 9).

With a mandate by President Barack Obama to wrap up the more than yearlong debate on health care reform in this country, a top administration official said, “We are in the final chapter.”

Increasingly cast as the villain in the nation’s rising cost for health care, five of the nation’s largest health care insurers met with the Obama Administration to argue that they are bit players in a much larger production.

A new civil suit alleges that Anthem Blue Cross, one of California’s largest health insurers, is using rate hikes to force its policyholders into lower-benefit and higher-deductible health plans, thus violating state law.

President Barack Obama said Americans “deserve a final vote on health reform” and called on leaders of the U.S. House and Senate to schedule a vote on his latest proposal “in the next few weeks.”

The National Flood Insurance Program, which ran out of funding Feb. 28, has been extended to March 28, the latest in a series of short-term extensions by Congress.