A spokesman for President Barack Obama acknowledged today (Dec. 13) that if the individual mandate isn’t legal, it will be difficult to provide coverage to people with pre-existing conditions, a key aspect of health reform.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the new reconciliation package she wants the full House of Representatives to pass in a few days includes greater insurance reforms and warned that insurance companies will be “poisoning the well” with “misrepresentations” and “misinterpretations” designed to kill the bill.

A day after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said she is considering a maneuver to bypass an actual vote to approve comprehensive health care reform, Republicans came out firing.

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.”

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.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told reporters today (Jan. 21) that she does not “see the votes” in her chamber of Congress to pass the Senate’s comprehensive health reform bill without changes.

As the U.S. House and Senate continue to work to merge their comprehensive health reform bills into one piece of legislation for the president’s signature, one large obstacle appears to have been knocked down.

A House committee has scheduled a hearing to examine the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s possible role in prohibiting public disclosure of some of the details of the taxpayer bailout of American International Group.

With Congress reconvening after its August break, the final Senate committee to draft health reform legislation may endorse a plan that includes a tax on private insurance companies and forgoes a government-run competitor.

Despite earlier reports, and in the face of “balloons” floated by senior White House and Administration officials, Press Secretary Robert Gibbs insists that a public health plan is still a cornerstone …  Read →