News Clips

At the heart of President Obama’s drive to rein in health costs is a proposal for federal review and regulation of health insurance premiums, with a new agency empowered to block excessive rate increases.
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The White House is mounting a stinging, sustained broadside against health insurance rate increases as President Obama and his aides enter what they hope will be the final stretch of a year-long political war over health care reform.
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Since the Senate passed its version of a health overhaul on Christmas Eve, most of the debate has focused on the politics of the effort. By now, many people have forgotten — if they ever knew — what the bill would actually do. So here’s a short refresher.

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While Medicaid is the main government health insurance plan for the poor, the joint state-federal program has excluded Matthews and millions of other adults with no dependent children since the 1960s.
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Like most Americans, Dominic Ouellette, an uninsured 23-year-old waiter in Washington, likely would be required to have health coverage under the legislation being debated in Congress. Because he’s younger than 30, though, he could buy a low-cost plan under the Senate bill and the new White House proposal.
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To bolster the case for a far-reaching overhaul of the health care system, the Obama administration is seizing on a new analysis by Goldman Sachs, the New York investment bank, recommending that investors buy shares in two big insurance companies, the UnitedHealth Group and Cigna, because insurance rates are up sharply and competition is down.
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As legislators attempt to plug what could be a $300 million shortfall in revenues, social service providers across the region are scrambling to deal with $60 million in cuts proposed in February by the Missouri House Appropriations Committee for Health, Mental Health and Social Services.
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A budget appropriations committee in the Missouri House of Representatives has voted to eliminate funding for community health centers at a time when more Missourians are finding themselves unemployed, uninsured and in need of health-care providers.
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President Obama offered Tuesday to address some of the concerns expressed by Republicans in the health care debate as the two parties maneuvered for advantage heading into the legislative end game.
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At least a half-dozen House Democrats who voted against the health care bill say they are now undecided, and President Barack Obama says he is willing to embrace several Republican ideas to collect more votes.
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The House Committee on Energy and Commerce has summoned the chiefs of WellPoint, UnitedHealth Group, Humana and Aetna to testify about denying claims for policyholders with preexisting conditions.
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Denise Camp was resigned to the double standard that had long applied to her medical bills, forcing her to skimp on other expenses so she could pay for mental health treatment.
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President Obama this week will begin a climactic push to rally restive Congressional Democrats to pass major health care legislation by hammering the argument that the costs of failure will be higher insurance premiums and lost coverage for individuals and businesses.
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Hundreds of thousands of out-of-work Americans will begin losing unemployment and health benefits this week as a one-man filibuster in the Senate continued to block a measure to extend those and other programs for one month.
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The White House said Monday the leading tactic to win passage of the health care bill was nothing extraordinary, rehearsing a key argument in the final public-relations battle over the bill.
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If you listened carefully to the White House summit on health care last week, you could hear, among all the disagreements, a few points of agreement.
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Suppose Congress and President Obama fail to overhaul the system now, or just tinker around the edges, or start over, as the Republicans propose — despite the Democrats’ latest and possibly last big push that began last week at a marathon televised forum in Washington. Then “my health care” stays the same, right?

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Obama said that two parties might be able to reach agreement on 95 percent of the issues, but he says expanded coverage and pre-existing conditions may turn out to be gaps that cannot be closed.
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President Obama declared Thursday that the time for debate over health care reform has come to an end, closing an unusual seven-hour summit with congressional leaders by sending a clear message that Democrats will move forward to pass major legislation with or without Republican support.
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The nationally televised session stretched over more than seven hours and, to no one’s surprise, yielded no new agreement, although lawmakers strove to maintain an atmosphere of decorum and cooperation—even as they aired their warring views.
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President Obama’s face-to-face effort to forge a bipartisan agreement on health care overhaul appeared to fall short Thursday, as differences that have plagued the process for months re-emerged during a meeting at Washington’s historic Blair House.
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A bill that would mandate insurance coverage for Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is now one step closer to becoming a reality after being passed by the Missouri House of Representatives.
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President Barack Obama will use a bipartisan summit Thursday to push for sweeping health care legislation, but if that fails to generate enough support the White House has prepared the outlines of a more modest plan.
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The House voted Wednesday to strip health insurance companies of their exemption from federal antitrust laws, a Democratic measure that could resonate with public concerns about insurers but that has an uncertain future in the Senate.
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To reconcile or not to reconcile — when it comes to a health overhaul bill, that seems to be the biggest argument of the moment.
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Republican Congressional leaders on Tuesday rejected President Obama’s challenge to come up with a single comprehensive proposal to achieve his goal of guaranteeing health insurance for nearly all Americans.
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His plan isn’t a blueprint for a new approach to revamping the system and will likely be used as a guide to modifying existing legislation.
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With comprehensive health care legislation foundering in Congress, the House is turning to a narrower piece of legislation that lawmakers hope has widespread, populist appeal: repealing the antitrust exemption for health insurers.
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President Obama on Monday issued his own blueprint for a health care overhaul, challenged Republicans to come forward with their ideas and laid the groundwork for an aggressive parliamentary maneuver to pass the legislation using only Democratic votes if this week brings no progress toward a bipartisan solution.
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Some small-business advocates criticized President Barack Obama’s proposed health care overhaul as imposing stiffer requirements on employers to provide insurance for workers while not doing enough to lower costs.
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For the first time in the year-long debate over health care, President Obama has released his own vision of what a comprehensive overhaul should look like.
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Here’s how President Obama’s plan for the health care overhaul compares with the Senate and House versions.
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Obama definitely throws in a new twist or two, such as proposals for federal oversight of health insurance rates and making it illegal for brand-name drug manufacturers to delay release of generic competitors.But the fundamental approach to expanding health coverage is the same.
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President Obama made it clear Monday morning that he intends to make a final push for a comprehensive overhaul of the nation’s health care and insurance system, offering a new health care plan that largely embraces the approach already taken by the U.S. Senate.
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Some governors, frustrated by halted federal efforts to overhaul the U.S. health care system, are introducing their own changes at the state level.
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President Obama’s new health care overhaul plan would give the federal government greater authority to stop rate increases imposed by health insurers, an administration official said late Sunday.
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A firestorm between the Obama administration and health insurers escalated Thursday, as the Department of Health and Human Services pointed to double-digit price increases or attempted increases in six states to make the case for overhauling the health care system.
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Facing relentless fiscal pressure and exploding demand for government health care, virtually every state is making or considering substantial cuts in Medicaid, even as Democrats push to add 15 million people to the rolls.
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The recession has fueled the greatest influx of Americans onto Medicaid since the earliest days of the public insurance program for the poor, according to new findings that show caseloads have surged in every state.
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President Obama will put forward comprehensive health care legislation intended to bridge differences between Senate and House Democrats ahead of a summit meeting with Republicans next week, senior administration officials and Congressional aides said Thursday.
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A proposed tax on high-cost health insurance plans, an element of Democratic health care legislation that has been strongly opposed by organized labor, would actually fall equally on nonunion plans, according to a new analysis.
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Health insurers regulated by the state would have to cover treatment for autism under a bill that has passed the House and moved to the Senate.
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Southeast Missouri did not fare well in a snapshot of well-being by counties across the United States.
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A hefty infusion of cash for community health centers in last year’s federal stimulus package may be paying off.
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For the first time, a new report reveals how counties across America stack up when it comes to health.
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The Missouri House on Tuesday took the first step toward mandating that insurance companies cover certain treatments for children with autism.
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More than a quarter of American children have a chronic health condition such as obesity or asthma, but many children overcome these problems with time, U.S. researchers said on Tuesday.
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St. Charles County ranks second in healthy residents in Missouri, behind Platte County, according to a first-of-a-kind study rating the overall health of counties in all 50 states.
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A Missouri House committee slashed nearly $60 million from social-service programs in next year’s budget, including funding for health clinics, child care subsidies and assistance to victims of domestic violence.
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With health care negotiations stalled in Washington, the Obama administration is seizing on the seething fury felt by Mr. Punzet and nearly 700,000 other Anthem customers in California who have received notices of increases that average 25 percent.
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Is forcing people to have insurance a useful strategy to spread the costs, or an ill-conceived notion that would only exacerbate the problem?
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The latest estimates place the number of U.S. children with autism spectrum disorders at 1 in 110.
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The Missouri Dental Association argues that putting all Medicaid dollars for dental services in one pot and setting up a single-payer system to run it would produce a more efficient and less costly system.
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What could be worse than health care overhaul? No health care overhaul.

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Proponents of leaving health-care reform to the states have gained momentum as national legislation stalls in Congress, setting off a new debate over who is best able to tackle one of the nation’s thorniest social issues.
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Missouri lawmakers, from both the House and Senate are proposing legislation that would require insurance companies to cover treatment for Autism Spectrum Disorder.
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Anthem Blue Cross, the California health insurance company that was criticized by the Obama administration for raising its premiums, said Thursday that the increases of up to 39 percent were driven by rising health care costs.
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The Obama administration is seizing on a big health-insurance rate increase by WellPoint Inc. in California as fresh evidence of the need for action as it tries to resuscitate its health-care legislation.
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The monthly mortgage payment is the heaviest expense facing the average U.S. family but for heart patient Frank Amend, an engineer from North Carolina, the biggest cost is health care.
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Many parts of the economy are slowly recovering, but when it comes to health insurance costs, the worst appears far from over.
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President Obama said Tuesday that he will consider any Republican health care ideas, as long as the ideas address the goals contained in the Democratic plans already passed by the House and Senate.
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As Democrats have pushed for a comprehensive overhaul of the country’s health system, much of their plans have focused on providing coverage for America’s uninsured.
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Signaling he’d meet critics part way on health care, President Barack Obama said Tuesday he’s willing to sign a bill even if it doesn’t deliver everything he pursued through a year of grinding effort at risk of going down as a dismal failure.
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The national debate over health care appears to be taking a back seat to jobs creation — but the problem persists for people who have jobs but no health insurance.
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President Obama says he aims to keep trying. But what happens if the health care legislation cannot be revived, and tens of millions of uninsured Americans continue without coverage?
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When Republicans take President Obama up on his invitation to hash out their differences over health care this month, they will carry with them a fairly well-developed set of ideas intended to make health insurance more widely available and affordable, by emphasizing tax incentives and state innovations, with no new federal mandates and only a modest expansion of the federal safety net.
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The Missouri Senate spent nearly all of its session time Monday on resolutions that would urge the state’s attorney general to sue the federal government for legislation that may never see the light of day in the U.S. Congress.
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President Obama’s secretary of health and human services fired off a sharply worded letter to a California insurer Monday, demanding to know why it is raising rates for individual policyholders by as much as 39 percent.
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President Obama moved to jump-start the stalled health care debate Sunday, inviting Republicans in Congress to participate in a bipartisan, half-day televised summit on the subject this month.
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As a practicing psychiatrist and a state mental health administrator, Dr. Joseph Parks sees both sides of the debate over the use of antipsychotic medication to treat high-energy children who hallucinate, can’t sit still or keep their thoughts together.
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One in 110 children born in the United States is diagnosed with autism, but health insurance companies in Missouri do not routinely provide coverage for the disorder.
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Millions of Americans are now eligible for improved employer-provided mental-health and substance-abuse insurance coverage.
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For the first time, government programs next year will account for more than half of all U.S. health-care spending, federal actuaries predict, as the weak economy sends more people into Medicaid and slows growth of private insurance.
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With health care legislation stalled, Republicans are touting their own remedies, including allowing Americans to buy health coverage across state lines. Currently, consumers can buy policies only from insurers licensed by the states in which they live.
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Democratic leaders working to craft a health care bill were dealt a setback last week when Republican Scott Brown’s Senate victory in Massachusetts cost them the supermajority needed to block filibusters. Now the fate of the overhaul is in doubt.
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The White House, with its health care initiative in doubt, on Sunday zeroed in on several elements it hoped would survive, including measures to extend the life of Medicare, lower prescription drug costs for seniors and cap consumers’ out-of-pocket medical expenses.
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Governor Nixon recommends a 120-million dollar funding cut for the Medicaid program. But the administration thinks the cuts will be mostly painless.
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Trimming back the 2,000-page, trillion-dollar Democratic health care bills to the parts that average folks understand and like may not be as simple as it sounds.
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Even as Speaker Nancy Pelosi affirmed her commitment to pass far-reaching health care legislation this year, members of Congress and health policy experts began Thursday to deal with the reality that a smaller bill would have a better chance.
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As congressional Democrats work feverishly to bridge the gaps between the House and Senate health care overhaul bills, one issue is becoming a subject of considerable debate: affordability.
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Missouri legislators were warned of an impending "autism tsunami" Tuesday as committees in both chambers heard bills mandating insurance coverage for the disorder.
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Although disabled workers can expect improvements, the legislation moving toward final passage in Congress doesn’t deliver the clean fix that advocates for people with serious medical conditions hoped for. Some of the neediest could find themselves still in limbo.
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Missouri Republicans are raising concerns about federal health care legislation, claiming its mandatory Medicaid expansion would have a "drastic" and "devastating" effect on the state’s finances.
But some of their rhetoric may exceed reality.

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President Obama and congressional leaders raced Friday to strike a compromise on far-reaching health legislation, hoping to settle lingering disputes before Tuesday, when a special election in Massachusetts could hand Republicans their 41st vote in the Senate and the power to defeat Obama’s top domestic initiative.
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Gripped by a building sense that its window of opportunity could be closing, the White House on Thursday broke the last major logjam blocking enactment of far-reaching health care legislation, cutting a deal with organized labor on how to tax high-cost insurance policies.
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Until age 4, Charles Quigless, an angelic-looking child with a wide, gapped-tooth smile, had only his hands, feet and a variety of noises with which to communicate. When Charles was diagnosed with autism at age 3, his parents hit the ground running, knowing they had only a small window of time in which he could learn language.
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Should someone in Idaho or Nevada have significantly different health care coverage from someone in Massachusetts? That, essentially, is one of the biggest questions Congress will be wrestling with as it tries to meld House and Senate bills into a single law to revamp the nation’s health care system.

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Democratic congressional leaders are considering a new strategy to help finance their ambitious health care plan - applying the Medicare payroll tax not just to wages but to capital gains, dividends and other forms of unearned income.
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With a growing sense of urgency, President Obama and top Congressional Democrats held a marathon negotiating session on Wednesday in an effort to thrash out agreements on sweeping health care legislation that could provide insurance coverage to more than 30 million Americans.
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Democrats on Capitol Hill are divided over whether health insurance would be sold at the state or national level under their health care reform legislation, one of a series of differences between House and Senate plans that need to be ironed out before it can pass.
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As Congress seeks to reach consensus on a bill to provide health insurance for everyone, state lawmakers are turning their attention to the price tag.
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The White House wants to include a national health insurance exchange in the health bill, which would give House Democrats one of their top remaining demands, according to an official involved in the discussions.
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House and Senate negotiators working on President Barack Obama’s health overhaul bill appear likely to drop a proposed income tax increase on high-wage earners and possibly jettison a requirement for large businesses to offer coverage to their employees, Democratic officials said Tuesday.
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State senators get a thorough briefing on national health care, but don’t get the answer they crave most: how much will an overhaul cost Missouri.
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Getting a final health overhaul bill to President Obama’s desk by the end of the month or early February remains the goal of lawmakers who are returning to Washington this week. But the task remains a tricky one.
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President Obama told union leaders at a private White House meeting on Monday that he remained committed to taxing high-cost insurance policies as a way to drive down health costs. But he also signaled that he was willing to amend the proposal to “make this work for working families,” a senior administration official said.
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It isn’t often that the Missouri Chamber of Commerce sees eye to eye with some Democratic members of the Missouri congressional delegation on health care reform.
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It might be another week or so before Capitol Hill lawmakers in Washington get down to determining the look of the final health care reform bill. But state lawmakers in Jefferson City are already talking about it.
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Details on who would be eligible under House and Senate proposals; plus questions about shopping the ’exchange,’ understanding bronze and platinum plans, and more.
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Americans would see only a modest rise in health care costs under the Senate’s plan to extend coverage to 34 million people who currently go without health insurance, government economic experts say in a new report.
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The Petersons’ story helps explain the daunting task facing many uninsured people who need surgery or specialty care as well as the frustration of the increasingly fewer doctors who accept uninsured and Medicaid patients. It also raises the question of whether pending federal health reforms would help families like these.
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National health care legislation in Congress could slow the growth of medical costs, allowing employers to create 250,000 to 400,000 new jobs a year over the next decade, economists from Harvard University and USC are predicting.
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Advocacy groups lobbied President Barack Obama and Congress on Thursday, trying to eliminate what they called a "loophole" in Senate health care legislation they said could allow insurers to raise rates on customers based on their weight or blood sugar levels.
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Sen. Ben Nelson said Thursday he has asked Democratic leadership to extend to all states the extra Medicaid funding promised to Nebraska in the health care reform bill.
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With Congress on the verge of imposing a new tax on high-cost health insurance plans, skeptics continue to raise questions about who would be hit hardest and whether health care spending would be limited as much as proponents say.
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The White House supports an effort to tweak the health bill so it makes insurance more affordable for the lowest earners.
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President Obama told House Democratic leaders at a meeting on Wednesday that they should include a tax on high-priced insurance policies favored by the Senate in the final version of far-reaching health care legislation, aides said.
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House Democratic leaders said Tuesday that they would insist on changes to the Senate health care legislation to make coverage more affordable for middle-class Americans and to tighten control over the insurance industry.
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A federal law that took effect Jan. 1 requires that patients get the same level of medical treatment for mental problems that they now get for other health conditions.
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Eighty percent of Missouri’s counties don’t have enough physicians. Many of those counties are rural, according to the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services.
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Thanks to some last-minute maneuvering by Congress, thousands of jobless workers will continue to receive affordable health insurance in 2010.
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Michael Rhoads seems just the sort of person who would benefit from health care reform. He and his wife, working parents of two children in Southwest Philadelphia, lack health insurance. They earn too much to qualify for Medicaid and too little, they say, to afford private coverage.

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The health care overhaul bills on Capitol Hill do not upend traditional "fee for service" payment for doctors, but they do include financial incentives for doctors to cut medical costs and improve patient care.
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The Senate passed its version of the health care overhaul on Christmas Eve. Here are some questions about what’s next as the legislation continues to work its way through Congress.
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On an average working day last year the Missouri Department of Insurance took a complaint about health insurance every hour and 18 minutes, almost 11-hundred complaints about group health and more than 650 complaints about individual health insurance in all.
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Even as Democrats seek the biggest expansion of health coverage in decades, as many as 23 million people could still be without insurance by 2018, illustrating the complexity of achieving the long-held Democratic goal of universal health care.
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The government is expanding a massive safety net to help the unemployed buy health insurance, but millions of people can’t access the aid because of the way the program was designed.
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Senate Democrats approved landmark legislation just after sunrise Christmas Eve that would transform the nation’s health care system by requiring people without insurance to obtain coverage and protecting those who have it from the most unpopular private insurance practices.
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The Senate approved sweeping health overhaul legislation on Thursday, a landmark moment for White House-led efforts to expand insurance coverage to more than 30 million Americans.
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Missouri’s senators split over legislation overhauling the nation’s health insurance system — as have the state’s two leading Senate candidates.
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Now that the Senate has passed a hotly debated health care bill, Congress is headed to the next step: House of Representatives-Senate negotiations in January to hammer out a final version.
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For consumers, the most confusing part of the health care bill may be when — and if — they will see its benefits.
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The Senate passed its health care bill Dec. 24 but key differences need to be resolved with the House before a final measure is ready for President Obama’s signature.
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Now that the Senate has passed landmark health-care legislation with a rare Christmas Eve vote, the hardest work of all will begin: reckoning with long-standing differences between the House and Senate versions of reform and uniting behind a single bill that can be sent to the president.
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The Mayo Clinic, often cited by the Obama administration as a model for high-quality, cost-effective health care, generally supports key provisions of the legislation approved by the Senate, an official said Thursday, but he called for more aggressive steps to change how care in the U.S. is paid for.
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The Senate approved the landmark health bill early Christmas Eve, a key step for President Obama and the Democrats in moving forward with health overhaul.
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After more than three weeks of rancorous debate and a series of hard-fought procedural victories, Senate Democrats passed a bill that provides a blueprint for a sweeping overhaul of the nation’s health care system.
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A last-minute addition to the Senate health care bill that requires small construction companies to offer health coverage or pay a fine touched off a battle Tuesday with some industry groups demanding its removal.
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President Barack Obama on Monday signed a measure to extend a federal subsidy for continued health insurance coverage for involuntarily terminated workers under employer group plans.
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As the Senate lurches towards a final vote on its health overhaul bill, some people are daring to look ahead to the last step in the painstaking process: marrying the Senate and House bills.
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Democrats remained united as they started voting at sunrise Tuesday, pushing toward their goal of passing President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul by Christmas.
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The ’individual mandate’ expected in any final health care bill is meant to spread the cost and risk and to make sure that people don’t wait until they’re ill to buy coverage.
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Senate Democrats won a milestone victory early Monday in the health care debate, approving a procedural motion to move the reform legislation to final passage later this week, and without a single vote to spare.
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Despite legislation’s requirement, some Americans say they’ll go without insurance
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The Democratic-controlled Senate, voting 60-40, swept aside Republican objections and moved to close off debate on health overhaul legislation, marking a milestone moment for President Barack Obama’s most pressing domestic initiative.
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Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid unveiled a revised health care bill Dec. 19 that includes concessions on abortion and other issues needed to secure a 60-vote Democratic majority to overcome a Republican filibuster. The Senate is expected to vote Christmas eve.
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When Senate Democratic leaders agreed this week to remove a public insurance plan from their massive health care bill, they did more than quash a liberal dream of expanding the government safety net. They effectively pinned their hopes of guaranteeing coverage to all Americans on a far more conventional prescription: government regulation.
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With federal health care legislation lingering in Washington, there have been multiple bills pre-filed for the 2010 Missouri legislative session dealing with health care.
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A year in the making, sweeping health care legislation backed by President Barack Obama hung in the balance Thursday as conservative Democratic Sen. Ben Nelson withheld his vote in pursuit of stricter abortion limits and liberals grew restive on the left.
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Congress is getting down to the wire.
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The Senate health care bill could enable insurers to avoid some of the strongest consumer protections and benefit requirements adopted by state governments, Democratic lawmakers from Maine and California say.
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While lawmakers in Washington continue to debate how to make health care affordable for more Americans, thousands of unemployed New Yorkers like Rhonda R. Baumser are suddenly struggling to hang onto their health coverage.
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New obstacles slowed Senate action on the healthcare bill Wednesday, as the hunt for supporters narrowed to a lone Democrat -- Ben Nelson of Nebraska -- and Republican delaying tactics brought debate to a temporary standstill.
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The Senate keeps pushing aside hurdles blocking the huge health overhaul bill. But there are plenty more between the bill and a final vote, which backers still hope to take before Christmas.
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More than 16,000 of the sickest and most uninsurable Missourians could be covered under the state health care pool if it weren’t for high insurance premiums, according to the pool’s director.
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Senate Democrats on Monday evening dropped a plan to expand Medicare, winning the support of moderates and the reluctant acquiescence of liberals, in another major step toward building enough support to pass a health care overhaul.
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The health care system is complex, yet Americans’ experiences with it are deeply personal, making it a prime candidate for distortions and emotional manipulation. While people hold different views about what the nation should do about its coverage, cost and quality problems, facts and nuance often get lost in the political rhetoric of the debate.
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More people than ever are relying on public programs amid rising unemployment, but the departments that administer them are facing budget cuts as well.
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Health care reform legislation winding through the House and Senate gives her new hope because it would prevent insurers from refusing to cover such pre-existing conditions. But there’s a catch - that important provision would not take effect for years.
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Senate Democrats, as an alternative to creating a government-run insurance plan, proposed creating a nationwide plan that would be operated by a nonprofit. Here’s a closer look at the idea.
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The next 48 hours will be critical to the fate of health care reform in the Senate, as Democratic leaders struggle to settle disputes that stand in the way of holding a final vote this year on the massive package.
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Add the names of Ed and Ruth Sessa of Keytesville to the growing rolls of people going without health insurance.

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Democratic leaders hit a rough patch Friday in their push for sweeping health care legislation, as they tried to fend off criticism of their proposals from a top Medicare official, Republicans and even members of their own party.
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A loophole in the Senate health care bill would let insurers place annual dollar limits on medical care for people struggling with costly illnesses such as cancer, prompting a rebuke from patient advocates.
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Senate Democrats have provided few details about their latest health care proposal, but this much seems clear: Anyone who wants to buy the same health benefits as members of Congress, or to buy coverage through Medicare, should be prepared to fork over a large chunk of cash.
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House Speaker Nancy Pelosi expressed support Thursday for a Senate Democratic proposal to expand Medicare, raising prospects that the two chambers of Congress can work out differences on health care legislation.
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Senators from the two states have solidified their positions as the health care debate takes shape in that chamber.
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About the same time that snippets of a deal on health care legislation worked by Senate Democrats were leaking out Tuesday night, more than 150 unemployed people and their families gathered for a holiday party at St. Joseph’s Roman Catholic Church in Downingtown.
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Missourians have some of the nation’s worst dental health. The state ranks 47th in percentage of adults who have visited the dentist in the last year (63 percent).
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For eight hours Wednesday, as many as 1,000 people streamed through an enormous free clinic at Bartle Hall to get health care some had been putting off for years.
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While confusion reigned on Capitol Hill on Wednesday over the prospects and details of a Senate deal to replace a government-run insurance plan with other measures, it is not too soon to ask what the proposal would mean for regular people.
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The deal, which emerged late Tuesday night after days of negotiations among a group of 10 Democratic senators, dropped the idea of a government-run insurance program.
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Millions more Americans could get access to Medicare under the latest health proposal by Senate Democrats. But the program may not be cheap enough to entice some of them to sign up.
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Senate Democrats on Wednesday largely embraced a compromise that dropped a "public option" from health care legislation, setting aside their concerns about aspects of the consensus plan in the hopes that the deal hatched by negotiators would serve as a rallying point in their push for the passage of reforms.
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A group of Republican state legislators has pre-filed legislation attempting to exempt Missouri from any federal health care overhaul bill passed in Washington.
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Several hundred people were lined up – inside, not out in the cold – when a two-day free health clinic started at noon today at Bartle Hall.
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Senior Senate Democrats reached tentative agreement Tuesday night to abandon the government-run insurance plan in their health overhaul bill and to expand Medicare coverage to some people ages 55 to 64, clearing the most significant hurdle so far in getting a bill that can pass Congress.
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Democratic Senate negotiators struck a tentative agreement Tuesday night to drop the controversial government-run insurance plan from their overhaul of the health care system, hoping to remove a last major roadblock preventing the bill from moving to a final vote in the chamber.
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Despite the economic downturn that’s busting state budgets from Sacramento to Tallahassee, 26 states this year made it easier for low-income children, parents or pregnant women to get health coverage, according to a report released Tuesday by the Kaiser Family Foundation.
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They may still call it a "public plan," but private insurers — not the government — would offer coverage under a compromise Democrats are considering to win Senate passage of President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul.
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Senate Democrats are considering a significant expansion of Medicare and Medicaid, the health programs for the elderly and the poor, as part of a package of potential changes to health overhaul legislation that would also sharply scale back a proposed new government-run insurance plan.
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Racing to complete work on health care legislation before Christmas, Senate Democrats worked on a compromise Monday that could leave their bill without a new government insurance plan.
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PBS NewsHour talked to six individuals -- a small business owner, a young uninsured woman, and others -- and discussed with health policy analysts how each person might fare under the House and Senate reform bills.
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It’s known as "Express Lane Eligibility" -- an effort to put children on the fast track for government-run health care coverage.
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Democrats wrestled with a new proposal on a government health insurance plan that would give private entities a central role in running the program, in a bid for compromise on one of the health bill’s most divisive issues.
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President Obama traveled to Capitol Hill on Sunday to rally Democrats on his signature health care initiative as the Senate moved closer to addressing two of the biggest land mines in the bill’s path: the terms of a new public insurance option and limits on federal abortion funding.
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Some of readers’ most frequently asked questions since the health care debate began in earnest this summer.
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President Obama has promised that the nation’s health care overhaul will make medical insurance available - and affordable - for everyone.
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The Senate voted Thursday to require health insurance companies to provide free mammograms and other preventive services to women, and it turned back a Republican challenge to Medicare savings that constitute the single largest source of financing for the bill.
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During an announcement at the Burrell Autism Center, the governor and lawmakers said they will sponsor bills to make sure insurance companies cover "evidence-based" treatment for people with autism.
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Verzi is among the millions of unemployed workers nationwide who choose to keep their previous employer’s health plan under a federal act known as COBRA.
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At the end of a third day of Senate debate over sweeping health care legislation, Democrats and Republicans said Wednesday night that they had broken an impasse over the seemingly simple question of how and when to vote on the first amendments.
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A bill that would mandate insurance companies pay for behavioral treatment for autism failed to pass the legislature last session. A renewed attempt for the upcoming session is in the works.
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Senators prepared to cast their first votes Wednesday on health care reform, but even as partisan divisions hardened and contentious amendments stacked up, Democrats increasingly expressed optimism that they would succeed in passing a bill before Christmas.
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Democrats appealed to women and Republicans made a pitch to seniors Tuesday in amendments to the Senate health bill that showed how each party is trying to frame the health care debate.
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A new study estimates that the end of a hefty government subsidy could force millions of laid-off workers to pay more than 80 percent of their monthly unemployment checks to keep their job-based family health insurance coverage intact.
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The Congressional Budget Office said Monday that the Senate health bill could significantly reduce costs for many people who buy health insurance on their own, and that it would not substantially change premiums for the vast numbers of Americans who receive coverage from large employers.

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As the Senate plunged Monday into a colossal debate on health care reform, a key question is blaring louder than ever: whether national proposals would do much to control health care costs.


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As the Senate takes up health care legislation this week, the question of whether it will "bend the curve" of soaring costs has emerged as a central dispute among experts and the subject of an all-out push by the White House.
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Millions of unemployed Americans face the prospect of a huge increase in health insurance costs, thanks to the looming expiration of a government subsidy.

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Pay attention: The "Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act" - better known as the Senate health care overhaul bill – is chock full of interesting but little publicized provisions affecting consumers.
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The White House has a message for Americans suffering under today’s health insurance system: "Help is on the way." But not as fast as you might think.

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Some questions and answers on the House-passed bill and the version the Senate will begin debating in the week ahead.
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The Senate is set to begin debate on its health overhaul bill Monday, with Democrats and Republicans planning to offer amendments on divisive subjects such as abortion and taxes that could hamper passage of the bill.
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Readers also ask about the penalties for not buying health insurance; changes that veterans would see; interstate insurance plans; and whether the ’public option’ would cover mammograms.
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Hundreds of doctors, nurses and other volunteers will be stationed at Bartle Hall next month for a massive two-day free clinic that, if experience holds true, could attract thousands of patients.
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Some of the debtors sitting forlornly in this city’s old stone bankruptcy court have lost a job or gotten divorced. Others have been summoned to face their creditors because they spent mindlessly beyond their means. But all too often these days, they are there merely because they, or their children, got sick.
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If the Senate were going to write a new rule for Medicare payments meant to slow the growth of medical costs, you might think that the rule would apply to hospitals and doctors. A fair amount of medical care is, after all, provided by hospitals and doctors.
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As the health care battle rages on, one central question keeps popping up: How would legislation affect premiums paid by individuals and small businesses, two groups that currently face wildly unpredictable rate increases year to year?
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Gov. Jay Nixon is resisting a plan that could provide health insurance to thousands of Missouri children despite running for office on a pledge to expand health care access.
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Lawmakers debating health care on Capitol Hill have spent months worrying about the potential cost. But mostly it’s been the total cost of the bill, not how much individual families who could soon be required to buy insurance for the first time might have to pay.
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Gov. Jay Nixon ran for office last year on a platform of insuring every child. But as governor, he has resisted a proposal that could immediately cover thousands of Missouri’s 108,000 uninsured children.
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Democratic leaders finally moved their sweeping health bill to the Senate floor, where wheeling and dealing over major unresolved and divisive issues likely will shape the legislation before its next big test.
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For consumers, the health care bills taking final shape in Congress don’t rate close to a perfect 10.
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Democrats had little time to savor their weekend Senate health care victory, as two of the lawmakers who voted to move the debate forward Saturday night indicated Sunday that they will not vote to pass the package if it includes a government-run insurance program.
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Readers ask about the details of Medicare savings, plus a cosmetic-surgery tax and limits on abortion coverage.
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The Senate voted on Saturday to begin full debate on major health care legislation, propelling President Obama’s top domestic initiative over a crucial, preliminary hurdle in a formidable display of muscle-flexing by the Democratic majority.
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A proposed overhaul of health care narrowly passed the House. Now, the focus is on the Senate.
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On the Jaco Report, why there may be less to health reform than meets the eye. The American health care system is the world’s most expensive and is a long way from being the world’s most effective.
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The Senate version of sweeping health legislation would cover five million fewer people than a companion bill passed by the House, but it would cost less, in part because Senate Democratic leaders felt they had to win support from fiscally conservative members of their party.
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Bills moving through Congress have the potential to change how millions of Americans pay for and get health care.
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The health care overhaul debate in Congress now centers on two bills: the House measure and the Senate Democrats’ version unveiled Wednesday. They differ in important ways. Here are answers to questions you may have about the bills.
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Senate Democrats unveiled sweeping legislation Wednesday to overhaul the nation’s health care system. Earlier this month the House passed its own version.
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Democratic leaders in the Senate on Wednesday unveiled their proposal for overhauling the health care system, outlining legislation that they said would cover most of the uninsured while reducing the federal budget deficit.
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Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid set the stage for a climactic debate in the Senate over health care by unveiling a 10-year, $848 billion bill that would extend insurance to 31 million Americans without coverage.
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The House has passed an optimistic bill reflecting many liberal aspirations for health overhaul. The Senate’s final bill — expected to be introduced mid-November — is likely to lean more toward the Finance Committee’s proposal.
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Faced with high health insurance costs, a North Carolina brokerage passed the buck on to its employees, a Texas public relations firm switched from group insurance to stipends, and a Missouri travel agency let its workers walk away instead paying for insurance.
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Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid scrambled Tuesday to lock down votes behind a health care bill that he may present as early as Wednesday.
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One of the staunchest backers of the Children’s Health Insurance Program, Sen. Jay Rockefeller isn’t ready to see it swallowed up by a new health insurance marketplace designed by Congress.
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Ask small business owners about the U.S. House’s health reform legislation, and some will say it will take them a while to wade through the proposal.
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To pay for health care reform, the Senate leader considers raising payroll taxes for upper-income workers. Centrist Democrats prefer to tax costly ’Cadillac’ insurance as a way to lower health costs.
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Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is pressing to advance his version of health care legislation past a key juncture this week in a bid to avoid a timing crunch that could otherwise kick the proposed revamp into next year.
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While most of the major provisions won’t kick in for a few years, all the health reform proposals include some immediate reforms, such as the creation of a new high-risk insurance pool.
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Requiring employers to offer most workers health insurance has long been seen as a crucial piece of Democratic efforts to overhaul the nation’s health care system, but legislation that the Senate’s expected to consider soon is unlikely to include any such mandate.
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Uninsured patients with traumatic injuries, such as car crashes, falls and gunshot wounds, were almost twice as likely to die in the hospital as similarly injured patients with health insurance, according to a troubling new study.
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Some reader questions about the proposed health care legislation in Congress.
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Wedged in the House health care bill is $23.5 billion that looks a lot more like new federal stimulus spending than anything to do with national health-care reform.
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Millions of Americans are now engaged in a familiar ritual: signing up for next year’s health insurance coverage. Pick a plan. Pick a premium. Make sure choices are submitted and approved on time.

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A Missouri Congressman who voted against the health care measure which squeezed its way to passage in the United States House doesn’t believe the bill is going anywhere despite its passage.
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The debate in Congress over health care and insurance reform legislation may soon spill over into the Missouri legislature.
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U.S. Rep. Roy Blunt said Friday that he opposes efforts to end the insurance industry practice of charging higher rates to unhealthier groups of people.
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A group primarily made up of insurance and health care providers asked Missouri’s senior senator Friday morning about the proposed changes to health care and the effect reform would have on Missourians.
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The Business Roundtable, an association of top US business executives, issued an analysis saying the right combination of changes Congress is considering could slow health care cost growth by 15 percent to 20 percent over the next decade.
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When the Senate unveils its health care bill, all eyes will be on the price tag. But an equally significant number may be how many people get health insurance under the legislation.
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The Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, is considering a proposal to increase the Medicare payroll tax on high-income workers to help offset the costs of providing health insurance to millions of Americans, Senate aides said Thursday.
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Some Missouri officials say proposed health care legislation could create an unfunded mandate and even has some calling to abandon the state’s participation in Medicaid.
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In the two weeks since the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, embraced a proposal that would allow states to opt out of a new government health insurance plan, state leaders have begun debating whether to take part, and the question has emerged as a litmus test in some campaigns for governor.
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Majority Leader Harry Reid is considering a plan for higher payroll taxes on the upper-income earners to help finance health care legislation he intends to introduce in the Senate in the next several days, numerous Democratic officials said Wednesday.
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The Senate majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, said Tuesday that he expected to bring major health care legislation to the floor next week and to complete work on the bill before Christmas. But other Democratic leaders said it was unlikely that a bill could reach President Obama’s desk by year’s end.
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Missouri recently announced it’s cutting $3 million from the Department of Mental Health and will no longer fund services for new patients that don’t have Medicaid.
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As the U.S. government comes closer to reforming the country’s health care system, states are staring at spending millions of dollars they do not have to provide insurance to more people, officials said on Tuesday.
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The bill would limit how much insurers can vary premiums based on the age of the person buying the policy. The narrower the range, the lower the premiums for older people, a help to those who currently pay some of the highest rates for insurance and often need coverage the most.
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Mr. Obama has made cost containment a centerpiece of his health reform agenda, and in May he stood up at the White House with industry groups who pledged voluntary efforts to trim the growth of health care spending by 1.5 percent, or $2 trillion, over the next decade.
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The health care overhaul passed by the House of Representatives over the weekend was almost scuttled by one issue: abortion.
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The American Medical Association on Monday rebuffed dissident members and voted to stick with support for ongoing health reform efforts, while reiterating wariness over proposals that threaten doctors’ pocketbooks and independence.
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The question is what the so-called age-rating ratio will be. Older adults would be charged at least double, which critics call discrimination. Insurance firms say it’s necessary for a solvent system.
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After a daylong clash with Republicans over what has been a Democratic goal for decades, lawmakers voted 220 to 215 to approve a plan that would cost $1.1 trillion over 10 years.
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A core feature of the health overhaul proposal unveiled by House Republicans - and of GOP plans for years - would allow individual health insurance policies to be sold across state lines. Currently, consumers can buy policies only from insurers licensed by the states where they live.
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With the House health bill passed, Congress moves a step closer to making the biggest changes to the health system in more than four decades. Here’s a look at what the bill would mean for various groups.
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The House bill would provide interim temporary coverage. Also: questions about yearly out-of-pocket limits for subsidies, the federal COBRA subsidy, and more.
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The House Democrats’ bill is called the Affordable Health Care for America Act, HR 3962. The information below was gathered from the bill’s text, an analysis by the Congressional Budget Office, an analysis by the non-partisan Kaiser Family Foundation, and reporting by The Associated Press.
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The vote was razor close — 220-215. Thirty-nine Democrats, including Rep. Ike Skelton of Missouri, voted against the measure, while only one Republican, Rep. Anh “Joseph” Cao of New Orleans, voted for it.
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Here’s a breakdown of some of the key issues and where Missouri senators and representatives stand on pieces of health care reform.
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As House Democrats prepare to vote Saturday on a sweeping bill to overhaul the nation’s health care system, they have picked up an important endorsement today from the 40-million-member AARP, the nation’s largest senior citizens group.
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Four area lawmakers on Thursday outlined their opposition to the House Democrats’ health care legislation that is expected to come to a vote over the weekend.
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House Democratic leaders are pushing for a Saturday vote on their sweeping health care bill, but they are struggling to win over shaky rank-and-file members who could hold up its passage.
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Moderate lawmakers are exerting their outsize influence in the divided Senate to secure changes to health care reform legislation, potentially adding more delays to a bill that has already missed several announced deadlines.
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Safeway says it’s a smart incentive: charging lower premiums for people who lose weight, quit smoking or start exercising. Some medical groups say it’s a new way to exclude pre-existing conditions.
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House Republicans have come up with an answer to Speaker Nancy Pelosi, drafting an alternative health care bill that would reward states for reducing the number of uninsured, limit damages in medical malpractice lawsuits and allow small businesses to band together and buy insurance exempt from most state regulation.
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Instead of revolutionizing how care is delivered and paid for, experts say, the legislation being shaped takes a cautious approach to reining in costs.
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The health insurance industry likes to cite figures showing that 87 cents of every dollar in premiums is spent on medical claims.
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As the House moved toward climactic votes on legislation to remake the health care system, the Congressional Budget Office said Monday that middle-income families might be required to pay 15 percent to 18 percent of their income on insurance premiums and co-payments under the proposal.
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For all the controversy over a government-run insurance option, the program outlined in health overhaul legislation likely would play a minuscule role in efforts to expand health care coverage, according to many health care experts and lawmakers.
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The debate over whether to let states opt out of any government-run health insurance plan overlooks a key facet of the health care measures being assembled in Congress: When Washington is done, the shape of any new health care system is likely to be finalized in Lansing and Boise and Baton Rouge.
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A report issued by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office highlights faults with both sides of the argument to create a public health insurance plan.
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Don’t throw a victory party yet. That was the message from former Sen. Majority Leader Tom Daschle this morning in a speech to health care professionals, students and legislators in Columbia.
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House leaders unveiled their sweeping health bill Thursday, ending months of negotiations to bring together fractious Democrats and setting the stage for the full House to take up the bill next week.

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The Democratic leadership in the U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday made public a sweeping health care overhaul that lawmakers could consider as early as next week. Here are the major provisions of the bill.
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President Obama appealed Thursday to small businesses to support congressional legislation on health insurance reform, saying it will revive America’s entrepreneurial spirit slowed by the high costs of coverage for owners and their employees.
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Under pressure from moderate-to-conservative members of the House Democratic caucus, Speaker Nancy Pelosi has decided to propose a government-run insurance plan that would negotiate rates with doctors and hospitals, rather than using prices set by the government, aides said Wednesday.

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Consumers would be spared having to pay huge medical bills under Democratic health care legislation that’s moving through Congress, as lawmakers agree on the need to put limits on how much people would pay out of their own pockets.
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Medicaid and other health care expenditures topped Gov. Jay Nixon’s list as he announced $204 million in budget cuts Wednesday.

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The health care crisis in this country is felt nowhere more than in rural America, where a lack of providers and affordable insurance coverage leaves many without needed treatment or in a financial bind.
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The push by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid for a public health insurance option is creating fresh obstacles for health care legislation in the Senate, despite new poll data suggesting a plurality of Americans support the idea.
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Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid’s risky decision to bring to the chamber’s floor a health care bill containing a government insurance plan was met with skepticism by moderate Democrats, who said they still do not know whether they could support a public option on a final vote.
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As the health care debate winds its way through Congress, everyone can agree on at least this much: Bringing more young adults into the health care system would balance out the costs for everyone else because the young use the least amount of care.
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The rules for how health insurers use age to set premium rates vary widely from state to state.
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Lawmakers are moving toward creating a new public insurance plan as part of the health overhaul. Here’s what it means.
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Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid announced Monday that he will include a government-backed insurance plan in the chamber’s health care reform legislation, a key concession to liberals who have threatened to oppose a bill without such a public option.
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After claiming for more than a year that it could not do so, the Missouri Department of Social Services finally has obeyed a state law and published a list of employers whose workers get government-funded Medicaid health care coverage.
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Low-income people could get federal assistance, but even a ’public option’ may leave out some individuals.
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Time growing short, Democratic leaders in the House and Senate still face key decisions if they are to achieve President Barack Obama’s goal of passing legislation to remake the nation’s health care system by year’s end.
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Top Senate Democrats are close to finalizing their health bill and could unveil a measure as soon as early this week that would include stiffer penalties on employers who fail to provide health coverage.
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As President Obama’s push for a health care overhaul moves toward its final act, the oft-vilified health insurance industry is on the verge of seeing a plan enacted that largely protects its financial interests.
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And the question of whether people will follow a government order that they carry health insurance - an issue that will help determine whether universal health care is a success or costly failure - will depend on more than the penalty they would pay for refusing, many economists say.
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The high cost of health insurance premiums would continue to put coverage out of reach for millions even if Congress approves legislation President Obama says is intended to ensure "that every American has affordable health care."
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Congressional Democrats working on an overhaul of the U.S. health care system are discussing several different possibilities for a government-run insurance plan to compete against private insurers.
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The Pennsylvania home health care company Linda Bettinazzi runs is charged about $6,800 per worker for health insurance – $2,000 more than the national average for single coverage. One reason: nearly every one of her 175 employees is a woman.
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As Congress nears votes on legislation that would overhaul the health care system, many small businesses say they are facing the steepest rise in insurance premiums they have seen in recent years.
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They often work 40 hours a week — sometimes 80. They talk of being embarrassed or of living in fear of a common cold or twisted ankle, of an accident or illness that in an instant could fell them or a family member and hobble their financial lives for years.

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House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) said Friday that states might be able to "opt out" of any nationwide government insurance plan, a compromise that she suggested could unify congressional Democrats and enable President Obama to sign a health care overhaul bill later this year.
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House Democratic leaders signaled flexibility Friday on how a proposed government-run health insurance plan would operate in the private market, in an overture to centrist lawmakers who want to limit the government’s impact on the market.
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Business groups won a big victory last week when a key Senate committee voted to place only modest penalties on employers that don’t offer health insurance coverage. But employers are almost certain to face stiffer penalties in the final Senate health care overhaul bill.
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Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, stepping deeper into the health care debate, put his weight Thursday behind a proposal that would create a new government-run insurance plan while giving states the option not to participate.
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House Democrats are coalescing around an $871 billion health care package that would create a government-run insurance plan to help millions of Americans afford coverage, raise taxes on the nation’s richest families and impose an array of new regulations on private insurers, in part by stripping the industry of its long-standing exemption from federal antitrust laws.
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In pushing to include a government-run health insurance plan in the health care bill, the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, is taking a calculated gamble that the 60 members of his caucus could support the plan if it included a way for states to opt out.
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House Democrats have reached a deal on Medicare payments that will secure critical support from heartland and Pacific Coast lawmakers for President Barack Obama’s goal of revamping health care.
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Health insurers insist they’re still committed to getting a health care overhaul bill passed this year. But all around Washington, people are wondering if — or when — the industry will change its mind and try to kill it.
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A report released Thursday says health conditions of residents of north St. Louis are generally worse than those of blacks in other major cities, and, in some case, "mimic Third World indicators."
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Federal legislation to reform health care is still under way, with several different versions of the bill being combined into one.
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If you want to understand how to fix today’s health insurance system, you’d be smart to look first at how it was born. How did Americans end up with a system in which employers pay for our health insurance?
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Democrats in the U.S. Congress moved on Wednesday to repeal the health insurance industry’s exemption from antitrust laws, cranking up the pressure in a growing battle over President Barack Obama’s health care reform plans.
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Perplexed by the unusually high rates she was paying for her employer-provided health insurance, NPR member station reporter Sarah Varney set out to better understand the system.
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Last week, the Senate Finance Committee voted 14 to 9 to approve its health reform bill - the fifth legislative committee to pass reform legislation. Here’s a rundown of where things stand - and what to expect in coming weeks.
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Supporters of health care reform told senators Tuesday that insurance exchanges are a critical part of proposed health care legislation for small businesses, which are cutting jobs and coverage to keep up with insurance costs.
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Senators battled Tuesday over legislation to forestall a cut in Medicare payments to doctors, trying to seize the advantage in the larger health debate.
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The older you are, the more you usually pay for health coverage, and that’s a difference likely to persist under the sweeping health care legislation that Congress is now considering.
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When Jay Nixon stopped by a Columbia residence in November 2007, he wasn’t shy about talking about expanding the state’s Medicaid program.
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Today is a national day of action on health care reform. Proponents of extending health care benefits to more people, including a system of government-run coverage, planned to take to the streets to mobilize people to call their representatives in Congress to demand action.
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The idea of creating a government-run health insurance plan, once on life support in the Senate, is making a recovery among Democrats writing health care legislation.
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A new Washington Post-ABC News poll shows that support for a government-run health care plan to compete with private insurers has rebounded from its summertime lows and wins clear majority support from the public.
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U.S. Republicans will seek amendments to parts of the Democrat’s health care reform they oppose, rather than push for an alternative plan to overhaul the $2.5 trillion system, a key senator said on Monday.
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The number of Americans worried about losing their current health care coverage keeps rising, even as President Barack Obama and a Democrat-led Congress strive to extend society’s safety net to cover the uninsured, a new poll has found.
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Despite growing frustration with the way health insurers deny medical treatments, major health care bills pending in Congress would give patients little new power to challenge those sometimes life-and-death decisions.
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About one of every eight Missourians lacked health insurance in 2007 and 2008, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Faced with that daunting figure - which could grow amid economic pressures and high unemployment rates - local health leaders are working to expand affordable access to medical care.
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Readers also ask about buying insurance across state lines, increasing competition and allowing national plans.
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No matter what happens with health care reform this fall, employees should expect to pay more for health insurance in 2010 -- especially with co-pays and deductibles.
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Americans may be growing sick of the debate over health care reform. Lobbyists, though, are getting well.

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Young adults aged 19 to 29 are less well-protected by health insurance than any other age group in America: Almost one in three have no insurance — and many more are underinsured.
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Three years ago, Massachusetts passed the most sweeping health care bill in the country, adopting a plan that closely resembles the proposals being considered by Congress. It is a plan that now offers powerful lessons for the whole nation.
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For all the sound and fury about President Barack Obama’s plan to overhaul health care, one curious fact stands out: Obama has no plan of his own.
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Don’t be fooled by the turmoil. This is the week the odds tipped ever so slightly in favor of a health overhaul passing Congress.
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Senate Democrats may widen insurance coverage in sweeping health legislation, Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus said Thursday, but they face a struggle to come up with ways to pay for the extra spending.
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House Speaker Nancy Pelosi warned insurance companies on Thursday that health care reform could cost the industry dearly through new fees, fewer regulatory protections and fresh competition from the federal government.
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The insurance industry’s once-unified stance in the health care debate is showing signs of fissure as legislation to overhaul the system moves forward.
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With health care reform bills advancing to the floors of Congress, organized opposition is building from Republicans, insurance companies and some physicians.
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As Congress continues to debate health care reform in Washington, a study by Families USA says about 45,000 people in Missouri lost health insurance coverage in 2009 due to a rise in unemployment.
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Republican Sen. Susan Collins Wednesday signaled a willingness to work with Democrats on health care legislation, adding momentum to President Barack Obama’s push for a bill despite a move by Republican leaders to slow down the debate.
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As the White House and Congressional leaders turned in earnest on Wednesday to working out big differences in the five health care bills, perhaps no issue loomed as a greater obstacle than whether to establish a government-run competitor to the insurance industry.
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By making the case for a health care overhaul, Barack Obama joins the ranks of seven other American presidents who grappled with the issue.
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National surveys and checks with local brokers indicate that 2010 plan costs will jump 10 percent to 12 percent on average, with employees footing more of the bill.
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Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid began private meetings Wednesday with fellow Democrats and the White House to merge his chamber’s two health care overhaul bills into a single plan that could win a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate.
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Health care legislation is taking shape in both the House and Senate. Details are still being negotiated and any final bill would have to meld proposals from both houses. A look at various proposals.
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The push to overhaul America’s $2.6 trillion medical system entered a decisive stage Tuesday following a historic vote by the Senate’s Finance Committee.
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After months of wrangling over how to reshape the nation’s health care system, the last of five congressional committees on Tuesday endorsed its sweeping blueprint for expanding coverage and containing costs.
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The Senate Finance Committee advanced President Barack Obama’s health care agenda Tuesday, with a lone Republican vote helping centrist Democrats set a benchmark for the final stage of congressional negotiations.
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US President Barack Obama made reform of the American healthcare system his top priority when he entered the White House. But lawmakers in Congress are finding it difficult to agree on a bill to implement reform.

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If you have ever lost a job and the health benefits that went with it, you have probably heard of COBRA, the program that requires employers to extend your health coverage for a price.
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Missouri’s health care system ranks in the bottom half of state systems nationwide, according to scorecards released last week by a national health care research group. The state’s rank fell slightly from its position in a similar report in 2007.
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As a key Senate committee prepares today to pass its plan to overhaul the nation’s health care system, senior Democrats are acknowledging that it may be impossible to provide coverage to all Americans -- a central goal of President Obama and his congressional allies.
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Obama administration officials and Congressional Democrats fired back on Monday at a new insurance industry report that said premiums would climb sharply with the passage of comprehensive health legislation.
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In a blistering new attack, the health insurance industry said Sunday that health care legislation drafted by Senate Democrats would drive up premiums, rather than making coverage more affordable, as the White House contends.
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The doors to the clinic had been locked for over an hour, and the last light in the sky was quickly fading when two eyes appeared in Teresa Moore’s office window, followed by a sharp knock and a glass-muffled plea to be let in: It was a patient.
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Among major industrialized countries, America spends the most on health care -- more than $7,000 a year for each of us, about double what the other countries lay out.
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A key vote on a health care proposal is scheduled for Tuesday. Here are some questions and answers about the vote and the next legislative steps.
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As the health care debate moves to the floor of Congress, most of the serious proposals to fulfill President Obama’s original vow to curb costs have fallen victim to organized interests and parochial politics.
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A new study points to a political paradox in the long, wrenching debate over revamping the healthcare system: Some members of Congress whose constituents stand to gain the most are nonetheless opposing the bill, while others whose constituents will likely pay more for little reward are some of its most ardent supporters.
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Two bodies lay on the sidewalk with chalk marking the outlines of the “corpses.” Yellow police tape blocked off the “crime” scene and kept reporters away. A drive-by shooting? Not at the intersection of Nifong and Forum boulevards; rather a publicity stunt to make a point about the nation’s health care system.

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Proposals that would require Americans to buy health insurance -- central to legislation circulating in both houses of Congress -- are under fire from both ends of the political spectrum, with some liberals saying the penalties are too harsh for those who refuse and conservatives denouncing the whole concept.
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While Congress haggles over the details of a massive health care overhaul, at least a few people will no longer have to worry about losing their health insurance if they get sick: college students who are still covered under their parents’ health plans.
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When it comes to health insurance for his 47 employees, Connelly would like to be just as accommodating. But after offering coverage from the company’s beginnings 30 years ago, Crown C is facing consistently rising costs, up to more than $200,000 - the second largest expense Connelly has besides payroll.
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The industry heavyweights President Obama neutralized through the summer are agitating that the health care bills in Congress violate agreements they made with the White House, leave 25 million Americans uninsured and have the potential to increase medical costs.
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The White House-backed drive for a health care bill picked up steam Thursday, propelled by a favorable report on its price tag and positive comments by some key players.
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In an average year, inflation nibbles away a bit more than 3 percent of our buying power. But for health care, inflation takes a big bite -- about 6 percent a year, year in and year out.
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The latest Senate health bill will cost $829 billion over a decade and slightly reduce the federal budget deficit, congressional budget crunchers said Wednesday, marking a major step forward for Democrats’ plans to overhaul American health care.
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The Senate Finance Committee legislation to revamp the health care system would provide coverage to 29 million uninsured Americans but would still pare future federal deficits by slowing the growth of spending on medical care, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said Wednesday.
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Two years after a 12-year-old Maryland boy died from an untreated tooth infection, low-income kids continue to face barriers to dental care despite state and federal efforts to improve access, government investigators said Wednesday.
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Health care legislation is taking shape in the House and Senate as President Barack Obama pushes to overhaul the system to cover millions of uninsured Americans and contain rising costs. A look at various proposals.
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In 2006, attorney Jody Neal-Post tried to get health insurance but was rejected because of treatment — counseling and Valium — she received following a domestic-abuse incident. She says the insurer told her that her medical history made her a high risk, more likely to end up in the emergency room or require additional care.
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Some influential centrist Democrats in the Senate are warming to a compromise that envisions health insurance plans run by state governments, and California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger added his voice Tuesday to a small group of Republicans expressing support for a Democratic-led overhaul plan.
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Senator Olympia J. Snowe of Maine worries that the bill would require people to buy insurance they cannot afford. Senator Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas fears that the bill would be too costly for the government.
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Congressional efforts to provide health insurance will have to go further in order to reach some Joplin residents now going without insurance.
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The health overhaul bill expected to emerge this week from the Senate Finance Committee was supposed to be the one to win at least some Republican backing.
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Despite all the disagreement in Washington, every proposal now before Congress to overhaul the nation’s health care system includes creation of an insurance “exchange” — a marketplace that would operate something like a Travelocity Web site for insurance policies.
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Senators learned Monday that a committee vote on health care reform will be pushed back to later this week, and perhaps into next week, as they await an estimate on how much the overhaul would cost.
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Health care will once again be a big topic of discussion when the legislature returns to Jefferson City in January, but that discussion could be shaped in large part by how health care legislation plays out in Washington.
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People who don’t get health coverage through their employer or the government sometimes buy coverage directly from insurers on the individual market, also called the non-group market.
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Like many teenage boys, Evan Fisher, 15, does some things that make his mom more than a little anxious.
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Hospitals and insurance companies are pushing back against changes to the latest Senate health care bill that ease the penalties for Americans who don’t carry health insurance.
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As Democrats prepare to take up health care legislation on the floor of the Senate and the House, they are facing tough choices about two competing priorities.
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"We simply don’t know if more is better. We do know, however, that more is terribly expensive and is pushing the nation’s medical-care system toward a major crisis." The year was 1986, almost a generation ago.
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Medicaid is a joint federal-state program that provides health care coverage for low-income people — primarily children, pregnant women, parents, the disabled and the elderly.
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He’s worked to sell it to voters on the stump.
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The nation’s governors are emerging as a formidable lobbying force as health care reform moves through Congress and states overburdened by the recession brace for the daunting prospect of providing coverage to millions of low-income residents.
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Lela Petersen thinks about health care a lot these days. She’s a small business owner who pays $1,150 a month to an HMO, covering her and her husband. Petersen doesn’t have any other option, but her 94-year-old mother, Gracie Scarrow, is another story.
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Any health care overhaul that Congress and President Obama enact is likely to have as its centerpiece a fundamental reform: Insurers would not be allowed to reject individuals or charge them higher premiums based on their medical history.
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Mental health advocates have joined the immense lobbying effort in Washington on health care reform. If they are successful, advocates say, reform legislation could be a huge step forward for the mentally ill.
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Many middle-class Americans would still struggle to pay for health insurance despite efforts by President Barack Obama and Democrats to make coverage more affordable.
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With the Senate Finance Committee set to approve its health care bill this week, Democrats are tantalizingly close to bringing legislation that would make sweeping changes in the nation’s health care system to the floor of both houses of Congress.
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Women’s health groups, legal organizations and some female senators are fighting for a host of little-known provisions in the health care legislation being debated in Congress that they say will dramatically improve health care and insurance coverage for women.
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Not all of America’s 46 million uninsured people can be considered victims of a system that excludes them financially or because of pre-existing conditions.
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Nearly 46 million people in America are without health insurance. But by some estimates, as many as one-third of them are what you might call "voluntarily uninsured." These are people who could afford coverage but don’t buy it.
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A Fayette family practice physician will be one of about 60 doctors appearing tomorrow at the White House to advocate for health care reform.
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After a marathon session that ran well past midnight, the Senate Finance Committee on Friday passed a major milestone in its work on legislation to remake the health care system and provide coverage to millions of the uninsured.
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The health care reform bills competing for votes in Congress are attempts to counteract the swiftly rising costs and rapidly growing ranks of uninsured Americans that threaten the nation’s medical system according to the Missouri Foundation for Health.
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The Senate Finance Committee planned to finish work on sweeping health care legislation early this morning and is expected to take a final vote next week, as Senate leaders forged ahead to the next painstaking steps: merging that bill with an earlier version written by the late Senator Edward M. Kennedy’s committee, then moving the combined package to the Senate floor.
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Democrats on the Senate Finance Committee voted Thursday to encourage limits on the compensation of insurance executives, responding to charges that expanding health insurance coverage would enrich insurance companies.
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The long quest to reform the nation’s health care system entered uncharted legislative territory early Friday when a key Senate panel wrapped up work on its bill and House and Senate leaders prepared for historic floor debates.
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Two State Senators are taking part in rallies, this weekend, to urge passage of legislation requiring health insurance companies to cover autism.
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Historic health care legislation could be on the floor of both houses of Congress as early as mid-October as Democrats work to answer President Barack Obama’s call for greater protections for those who have unreliable insurance or no coverage at all.
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On the sixth day of a marathon debate in the Senate Finance Committee, Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) declared that his panel has the votes to approve a package of reforms that would extend coverage to more than 30 million Americans who lack insurance.
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The recession is driving up enrollment in Medicaid at higher than expected rates, threatening gargantuan state budget gaps even as Congress and the White House seek to expand the government health insurance program for the poor and disabled, according to a survey released Wednesday.
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A U.S. Senate panel on Wednesday adopted a measure aimed at rewarding healthy behavior in a sweeping health care overhaul sought by President Barack Obama as lawmakers pushed to complete the legislation.
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Most Americans would pay higher taxes to fund health care reforms that provide the best quality of care, but only a minority expects Washington to deliver it, according to a survey released on Wednesday.
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If the U.S. Congress fails to reform health care, states will spend more on their programs for the poor than they currently pay out, according to a new report on Wednesday.
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Lawmakers are trying to crunch 2,079 pages of health insurance overhaul proposals into a sweeping new law. As they do, some key decisions could impact your wallet and your coverage.
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After an intense debate that captured the essence of the national struggle over health care, a pivotal Senate committee on Tuesday rejected two Democratic proposals to create a government insurance plan to compete with private insurers.
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Congressional Democrats this week will push toward showdowns on two of the toughest issues in the health care debate: whether to create a government alternative to private insurance, and how to pay the approximately $1-trillion cost of the overhaul.
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Young adults remain some of the strongest supporters of a health care overhaul, but many acknowledge they don’t understand proposals that will likely saddle them with higher costs.
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Federal health reforms under discussion in Congress have spurred hundreds of questions. Starting today, a team of Free Press reporters will answer your questions.
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Most Americans — 162 million — get health insurance through their employers. Sixty percent of employers offer health benefits, according to a new survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Health Research and Educational Trust.
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Dave Koenig gets private insurance through his employer and couldn’t be happier. A conservative, he thinks private health care is the way to go, but he supports some changes to the insurance industry to protect patients from losing their coverage.
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Call it a health care gamble: the decision by some people to opt out of health insurance, paying cash for routine care while playing the odds that an accident or catastrophic illness won’t plunge them into financial ruin.
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Federally funded health centers, originally created to serve the poor, are seeing a surge of patients as more Americans struggle financially.
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The health system overhaul proposed by Sen. Max Baucus would create millions of new insurance customers without subjecting health insurers to government-run competition - two key victories for the much-maligned industry.
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More than 25 million Americans have Swiss-cheese health insurance: It’s full of holes. Experts call them the "underinsured."
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People who are described as underinsured have health benefits that don’t adequately cover their medical expenses.
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Capitol Hill lawmakers who are crafting a health care reform package are being urged to consider the effects of reform on public hospitals.
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When it comes to their health care, no one is completely happy. Everyone has a complaint. And nobody understands the way the current system works, only that it doesn’t work very well.
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Araceli Jurado of Kansas City, Kan., has a kidney stone so large it threatens to destroy her kidney. She needs surgery, but she’s uninsured and she can’t afford the operation.
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Baucus has promised to resume committee work Tuesday. But the fight is increasingly shifting away from him and onto the Senate floor, where 99 other independent-minded lawmakers are already scheming about how to put their stamp on what could be the most significant piece of domestic-policy legislation in a generation.
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The health bill by Sen. Max Baucus went through four days of debate this week that revealed deep divides over how to fix the U.S. health care system.
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A proposal to reform America’s health care system by forcing everybody to buy into it has touched a nerve.
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Business is parting from its traditional allies in the Republican Party on health care as companies and big corporate lobbyists lend tentative support to a congressional overhaul that conservative lawmakers staunchly oppose.
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Advocates for a public insurance plan — the idea that has generated the most passion in the high-decibel health care debate — are pressing for a crucial test vote in the Senate Finance Committee.
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Instructor Jane Bennett tries to get the crowd, nearly all of whom are on Medicaid, to spend two hours learning about their children’s health.
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In the drive to bring health coverage to almost every American, lawmakers have largely rejected restrictions on how much insurers can charge, sparking fears that consumers will continue to face the skyrocketing premium increases of recent years.
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Slogging through a second day of work on legislation intended to overhaul the nation’s health care system, the Senate Finance Committee wrestled Wednesday with politically volatile proposals to squeeze money out of Medicare but largely delayed confronting the most difficult issues before it.
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Slogging through a second day of work on legislation intended to overhaul the nation’s health care system, the Senate Finance Committee wrestled Wednesday with politically volatile proposals to squeeze money out of Medicare.
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Assurances from the U.S. Congress that states will not be saddled with extra costs from a nationwide health care reform plan have done little to relieve the nervousness rippling through state legislatures and governors’ offices.
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Will your insurance premiums go up? Will your taxes? Will your Medicare coverage stay the same?
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Proposals would make buying insurance more affordable, reduce penalties and limit those hit by a new tax.
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The nation’s uninsured — a growing class of people whose recession-fed ranks have swelled to 46.3 million — are central to the health care debate in Washington and the questions about how and whether to get them covered are as vexing and emotional as they come.
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Vice President Joe Biden said new data showing health insurance premiums rising faster in every state than wages or inflation highlight the need for health care legislation.
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Medicare is the federal program that covers many of the health costs for people age 65 and older, as well as people younger than 65 who are permanently disabled. Within these groups, no one is excluded because of income or pre-existing conditions.
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Whether or not to create a new government-run health plan may be the biggest source of discord in the ongoing debate over a health overhaul. At the same time, however, many of the nation’s most satisfied health care consumers are recipients of an existing government health plan: Medicare.
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The Census Bureau reports that 17 percent of the U.S. population under age 65 was without health insurance last year. Texas had the highest rate at 26.5 percent, and Florida was second at 24.8 percent.
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As the Senate Finance Committee begins reworking Sen. Max Baucus’ health care bill today, the focus will be on keeping the final price tag below $900 billion - a target considered crucial to winning over moderate Democratic votes.
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Sen. Max Baucus said he would revamp his health overhaul proposal to ease the financial burden for middle-income Americans and pare back a key tax increase, responding to critics on Capitol Hill who called the measure too harsh.
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A greater percentage of residents in most of the metro region have health insurance than the average population in Missouri, Illinois or even the nation, according to U.S. Census Bureau estimates released Monday.
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Parents in the crowd wiped their eyes as the legislator told how he is fighting for therapy that will help a father take his son to a ballgame, a mother enjoy a movie with her daughter and a family go out to dinner.
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Although cast as a tax on gold-plated insurance policies for the well-heeled, it has prompted anxiety among the middle class.
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Neil Dukas knew little about health insurance because he had always been healthy. When he and his wife bought a high-deductible policy in 2008, he didn’t know the difference between a deductible and an out-of-pocket limit. He simply assumed that when he needed care, the insurer would cover it.
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According to the Census Bureau, in 2008, more than 46 million Americans — about 15 percent of the population — did not have health insurance. Because of the recession, many experts believe the number is now larger.
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Fernando Arriola spends his days keeping track of four or five construction projects, and his nights praying for good health. The New Orleans home builder is one of the 46 million people in this country who don’t have health insurance.
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The Federal Employees Health Benefits Program (FEHBP) is the "marketplace" for full-time governmental employees and qualified retirees to select health and dental insurance offered by insurance companies and employee associations.
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"This is what keeps me alive," says 13-year-old Toni Bethea, as she picks a tiny glass bottle off the kitchen counter of her home in Washington, D.C. The clear liquid inside is insulin. Toni has Type 1 diabetes.
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As proposals ricochet around Washington and forums held by legislators locally and around the country provoke deep passions on all sides, a roundtable will be held next week in Joplin so residents can get a diagnosis of health care reform.
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Some 25 complaints since 2006 from southwest Missouri health care providers and hospitals about health insurance reimbursements will be investigated by the state Department of Insurance, state officials said.
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It’s not exactly a political or town hall rally, but there will be plenty of fervor this Sunday from noon to 4 p.m. at a special "Show-Me Coverage Autism Insurance Rally" at T.R. Hughes Ballpark in O’Fallon, Mo.
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Lawmakers in both parties raised concerns Thursday that the health care reform bill offered by Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus a day earlier would impose too high a cost on middle-class Americans and said they will seek to change the legislation to ease that potential burden.
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Consumers, businesses and government have to divide a bill that now tops $2.5 trillion. The question is how.
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Senators of both parties said Thursday that they would seek significant changes in a Democratic proposal to tax generous high-cost health insurance policies.
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One day after physicians suffered a pair of setbacks in a health care bill unveiled by Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.), President Obama moved Thursday to ease the pain by accelerating a $25 million program aimed at softening the pinch of medical malpractice lawsuits.
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Nearly 45,000 people die in the United States each year - one every 12 minutes - in large part because they lack health insurance and can not get good care, Harvard Medical School researchers found in an analysis released on Thursday.
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Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D., Mont.) on Wednesday introduced his long-awaited health overhaul bill. Here are some questions and answers about how its provisions would affect consumers.
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Princeton economist and professor Uwe Reinhardt has spent his life giving out grades. So much so that he gives them out by instinct, even to things that don’t usually get grades.
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The latest health bill to emerge from the Senate contains a slew of measures designed to control costs. But it would be years before they kick in, and many may only put a dent in spending.
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A year-long effort by senators to draft a bipartisan overhaul of the nation’s health care system on Wednesday yielded the only congressional proposal that would extend coverage to millions of uninsured Americans while making good on President Obama’s pledge not to add "one dime" to budget deficits.
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In an important victory for the insurance industry, Senator Max Baucus’s legislative proposal does not call for a government-run health plan that would directly compete with private insurers.
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The major new health care overhaul bill that landed in the Senate on Wednesday sets the lines for a fall showdown over taxes, spending and coverage for millions of uninsured Americans.
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Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) released the crucial moderate alternative Wednesday in the struggle to refashion America’s health care system, a $856-billion bill that includes a mix of sweeping new insurance regulations but no government-run plan.
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On the surface, it appears that no one is happy with Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) - and that may be the best news President Obama has had in months.
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Insurance companies that provide medical malpractice coverage in Missouri are showing a profit due to fewer claims.
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President Barack Obama tapped into a large vein of public support when he suggested recently that he is open to reforming medical malpractice laws.
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Banks and insurers are battling for tax-advantaged health savings accounts to remain as one of the options in health care reform.
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While this year’s veto session passed without any substantive action, lawmakers are bracing for what could be a very difficult battle next year over the state’s budget.
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Though Americans who already have medical coverage may be wary of change, a new survey indicates that they may be hard-pressed to escape it - even in the absence of health care reform.
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President Barack Obama and his congressional allies have made insuring nearly all Americans a major goal of overhauling the nation’s health care system.
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As health care legislation advances through Congress, the young adults who were so vital to President Obama’s election are emerging as a significant beneficiary of his top domestic priority, but they are also likely to play a major role in funding any reform.
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The top Republican on the Senate Finance Committee said Tuesday that he could not support sweeping health care legislation drafted in more than three months of bipartisan negotiations by the chairman of the panel, and several liberal Democrats criticized the bill from the other side of the political spectrum.
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Missouri lawmakers heard competing testimony today on the cost of requiring health insurance companies to cover the treatment of children with autism.
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Some rank-and-file Senate Democrats are voicing concerns about sweeping health legislation being crafted by Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, citing what they describe as excessive burdens placed on some families and concerns over financing for the $880 billion package.
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Two of the three Republicans in a small group trying to forge a bipartisan compromise on health care have requested numerous major changes in a proposal drafted by the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, reducing the chances that he can win their support.
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Among all the players in the health care debate, doctors may be the least understood about where they stand on some of the key issues around changing the health care system. Now, a new survey finds some surprising results: A large majority of doctors say there should be a public option.
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The difference between a government program that works and one that fails spectacularly can be razor thin. A few words here, a loophole there, and you can turn a boon for the consumer into a windfall for big business.
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In the fight over a health care overhaul, Maryland’s experience with setting hospital rates suggests the federal government could realize savings on health spending, but at a price of more regulation for health providers.
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Nonprofit organizations say they are upset that Congress and the Obama administration have not addressed their rising health care costs in the various health care proposals being floated on Capitol Hill.
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Melissa J. Whitaker has one very compelling reason to keep up with the health care legislation being written in Washington: her second transplanted kidney.
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In his speech to a joint session of Congress, President Obama said his health care overhaul would cost "around $900 billion over 10 years" -- a hefty price tag but substantially less than the projected cost of some of the proposals lawmakers are considering. Here is a look at what that number means.
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For weeks, all eyes have been focused on the "gang of six." Now, President Obama has set his sights on a group of 17.
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In the debate over health care reform, Stokes and his peers are known as "invincibles," strong and healthy young adults who have no experience with wallet-crippling illness and feel they have no need for coverage. They’re also the most likely to be affected by the reform effort that President Barack Obama insisted in Wednesday’s prime-time address to Congress is crucial to the future of the economy.

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In his health care address Wednesday night, President Obama proposed a new element in his overhaul plan - the creation of a so-called trigger to prevent higher medical costs from pushing the budget deficit higher.
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Programs under way in several states could provide a template for President Barack Obama’s pledge to address medical-malpractice abuses.
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When President Obama broached medical malpractice laws in his speech to a joint session of Congress on Wednesday night, it was one of the few times that Republican lawmakers stood to applaud. But the ideas the president embraced stopped considerably short of the federal limits on awards in malpractice lawsuits that the GOP and the nation’s physicians have sought for years.
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President Obama’s new call to impose automatic spending cuts if the health care overhaul adds “one dime” to federal budget deficits could help push his top domestic priority over one of the biggest hurdles in its path through Congress.
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Governor Jay Nixon has ordered the Missouri Department of Insurance to look into complaints that health insurance companies are unreasonably delaying reimbursements to doctors and hospitals.
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President Barack Obama said in his address to Congress on Wednesday that the health overhaul should cost about $900 billion over a decade and not increase the budget deficit. It was the strongest signal he has given on the total tab, but Mr. Obama left unclear how he wants to cover it.
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More people are getting their health insurance from the government as the number of individuals with coverage from an employer declines, according to figures released Thursday by the U.S. Census Bureau.
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In the recession, the nation’s poverty rate climbed to 13.2 percent last year, up from 12.5 percent in 2007, according to an annual report released Thursday by the Census Bureau. The report also documented a decline in employer-provided health insurance and in coverage for adults.
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Senators are proposing changes to a draft health care bill offered this week by Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.), but their work has made plain that deep divisions remain among the lawmakers a week before they are due to make their bill official.
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President Obama laid out a lot of specifics in his speech to Congress and the nation Wednesday night, but when it came to how he would finance the measure — not so much information.
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The number of people living in the United States without health insurance rose to 46.3 million in 2008 from 45.7 million a year earlier, a U.S. Census Bureau official said on Thursday.
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It was an angry retort to Mr. Obama’s statement that illegal immigrants would not benefit from proposed health care legislation. And while other points in Mr. Obama’s speech were debatable, this one was not.
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President Obama on Wednesday night called for a new look at how medical malpractice lawsuits were handled as a possible way of containing spiraling health care costs.
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President Barack Obama gave an emotional, sometimes contentious address to Congress on Wednesday, combining tough talk to opponents with olive branches on policy in a bid to break the impasse on revamping the health care system.
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This summer’s heated national debate on the health care overhaul has centered on a wide range of proposals in Congress -- only some of which will end up in the final bill.
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Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) on Tuesday unveiled his long-awaited compromise blueprint for health care reform, proposing new taxes on high-end insurance plans and offering nonprofit insurance cooperatives as an alternative to a controversial government-run option.
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This summer, medical students from the University of Washington took a long look under the hood of the health care system they are about to inherit, and many returned to campus last week with their eyes wide open and their idealism tempered.
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As President Obama and his critics prepare for a climactic battle over health care, they face a seeming paradox: Millions of Americans say the system they depend on for everything from routine flu shots to life-saving heart surgery is broken and needs fixing. Yet most Americans also say they’re pretty satisfied with their health care.
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President Barack Obama, in a high-stakes speech Wednesday to Congress and the nation, will press for a government-run insurance option in a proposed overhaul of the U.S. health care system that has divided lawmakers and voters for months.
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When you have heart bypass surgery, you don’t want to find yourself pulling up to the hospital’s ER entrance two weeks later.
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Raymond Harris is only 54, but he already has gone through three kidneys.
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The number of medical malpractice claims pending in Missouri has reached a record low.
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To help sort out the substantive from the sound bite, we asked local and national health and policy experts to weigh in on 10 key questions -- including some submitted by readers.
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Here’s a look at some ideas being considered and the impact they might have.
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Leaders of the Senate Finance Committee are racing to reach an agreement on a health plan before President Barack Obama’s Wednesday night speech, but it isn’t clear if they’ll make it.
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The untimely disappearance of Sally Marrari’s medical coverage goes a long way toward explaining why insurance companies are cast as the villain in the health care reform drama.
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As the chief executive of TRW Automotive Holdings Corp., John Plant received the company’s generous health care benefits last year, as well as special "executive medical" coverage worth an additional $38,272.
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Returning from their summer recess, congressional lawmakers are facing a climatic showdown to the yearlong struggle over health care. At issue are scores of competing provisions scattered through half a dozen bills. And no final decisions have been made on any of them.
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As President Obama and top advisers drafted his eagerly awaited health care speech to Congress, new details emerged Monday about fees and coverage limits under a proposal being floated by the chairman of a crucial Senate committee.
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President Barack Obama kicked off a crucial week for his top domestic priority by pressing for a new government-run health insurance program just as key senators moved closer to a bipartisan deal that leaves out the public plan.
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Who will benefit — and who won’t — if Congress overhauls America’s health care system?
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Amid the highest unemployment rate since 1983 and a contentious political debate over health care reform, hundreds of marchers in the annual Labor Day parade through downtown were demanding change.
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This is where we head when a baby is in distress, when chest pains may signal a heart attack, when a person with asthma can’t stop wheezing, when there’s nowhere else to go for help. Four in 10 Americans have visited an emergency room in the past year, a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll finds.
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Would illegal immigrants be covered under Democrats’ plan? Would paperwork be handled more efficiently? What would state and local taxpayers pay? How would Medicare change?
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Over the weekend, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., proposed a health care overhaul "framework" for committee consideration that would cost under $900 billion over the next decade, according to a source close to the negotiations.
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With President Obama set to address a joint session of Congress about health care tomorrow evening, a St. Louis businessman makes his case for why health care reform is needed.
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Hospitals have received hundreds of millions of extra Medicaid dollars over the past few years as a result of a quiet deal intended to soften the blow of Missouri’s 2005 Medicaid cuts.
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Sen. Christopher "Kit" Bond, R-Mo., said people stop him in stores to talk about insurance. On her annual August farm tour, Rep. Jo Ann Emerson, R-Cape Girardeau, fielded concerns about health care amid questions about crop prices.
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Some of the difficult financial choices facing uninsured Americans — whether to go to a hospital or tough out an illness, whether to pay the rent or pay doctor bills — confront young people who not that long ago had to worry only about buying gasoline or paying a cellphone bill.
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Indeed, as Congress prepares for a fall session that promises to be dominated by the contentious health care issue, the political terrain is shifting as the nation has grown increasingly skeptical.
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For all the attempts to lower the cost of health care in the United States, it remains expensive. Overall medical spending accounts for more than 17 percent of America’s entire economy.
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As President Obama faces conflicting pressures from the left and the right over his proposal for a new public health insurance program, White House officials are investigating a possible compromise under which the government would offer its own health plan only if private insurers failed to provide affordable coverage.
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If health care reform has to be put on a diet to pass this year, how much must the proposal slim down?
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Janie Johnson has no health insurance, so when she cut her toe while giving herself a pedicure, she limped to the emergency room at one of Chicago’s safety net hospitals and waited her turn.
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When a patient shows up at a doctor’s office with a bruise after falling and bumping his head, the physician might order a CT scan even if she believes the injury is superficial. Worries about a malpractice lawsuit might prompt her to take steps that aren’t medically necessary.
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The roiling debate over health care this summer has included a host of accusations from opponents of the plan that have been so specious that many in the mainstream news media have flatly labeled them false. Far from embracing the attacks, many leading conservative health care policy experts said in recent interviews that the dynamic was precluding a more robust real-world debate.

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Congress is more likely than not to pass some form of health care legislation after it returns to work next week, U.S. Rep. Jo Ann Emerson said Wednesday.
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In the health care debate, many agree that the payment system for doctors and hospitals doesn’t work. They’re paid for each procedure they perform, giving them a perverse incentive to perform more.
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Economists have long said health care, as a market, is a strange animal. A large part of this is because patients don’t act like regular consumers.
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In the national debate over health care, a key factor driving up costs seldom gets discussed: the payment system for doctors.
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U.S. lawmakers returning next week to work on major health care legislation need to focus on insurance market reforms, consumer rebates and other measures that will curb soaring costs over time, economic and health experts said on Tuesday.
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Rural states have more uninsured and lower-income people who stand to benefit from legislation, but it’s there where the effort faces the most vocal resistance.
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In the Republicans’ most recent weekly radio address, Wyoming Sen. Mike Enzi offered several of what he called "common sense reforms" aimed at curbing health care costs: more competitive insurance plans, better information for health care shoppers, and that old GOP chestnut — cutting down on frivolous lawsuits.
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If health care reform occurs, it is likely to include an individual mandate — a requirement that every American have health insurance.
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Sending kids off to college is a stressful time for parents, but the Missouri Department of Insurance is reminding them to check their policies.
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A top House Democrat is investigating whether the nation’s largest health insurers have deliberately canceled coverage for small businesses after their employees became sick and sought expensive treatment.
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In the debate about health care overhaul, there are countless stories of families saddled with hospital bills and unemployed workers who have lost their insurance. But the story of Eric De La Cruz, of Las Vegas, stands out as a striking example of both the best and the worst that the American health care system has to offer �” extraordinary medical prowess that is too often out of reach for all but the luckiest and best insured.

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Critics of the Obama administration’s effort to overhaul the nation’s health care system say, among other things, that the nation cannot afford it. Here are some key questions and answers about the cost.
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Medicare beneficiaries would often have to pay higher premiums for prescription drug coverage, but many would see their total drug spending decline, so they would save money as a result of health legislation moving through the House, the Congressional Budget Office said in a recent report.
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Now, toward the end of the August recess, members of Congress are poised for a standoff on the issue. Based on the latest tallies, it appears reform legislation without a strong public option won’t fly in the House, and any bill that contains such an option will be sunk in the Senate.
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For years, insurers have charged older customers far more than younger ones, in part because of older residents’ higher use of medical services. Now, as Congress wrestles with a health care overhaul aimed at covering the majority of the 46 million uninsured, that discrepancy is one area targeted for change.
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Young people account for 30% of the uninsured population, according to a report by the Commonwealth Fund, a health policy research foundation. They are least likely to be offered health insurance through employment benefits -- just 53% of working young adults are eligible for employer-based coverage.
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Few causes in the health care debate draw more support than tort reform — the idea of reining in frivolous lawsuits that lead to unjust cash awards, soaring malpractice premiums and “defensive medicine,” the unnecessary tests ordered by doctors to avoid being sued.
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With a virtual civil war raging over parts of President Obama’s health care agenda, the smoke of battle has obscured a surprising fact: Democrats and Republicans actually agree on a bundle of proposals that could make medical insurance better for millions of Americans.
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Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.), a pivotal lawmaker in the health care debate, wants to deliver coverage to the uninsured by starting up new cooperatives modeled on rural electric cooperatives that were founded during the Great Depression.
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Turns out you can fear a government takeover of health care even if the government already took over your health care.
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Democrats quickly tried to turn the death of Massachusetts Sen. Edward M. Kennedy into a new spur for their stalled health care overhaul effort. But the liberal icon’s passing could as well hobble the campaign, by depriving the majority party of a key vote at a critical juncture in the debate.
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The nation’s fiscal outlook is even bleaker than the government forecast earlier this year because the recession turned out to be deeper than widely expected, the budget offices of the White House and Congress agreed in separate updates on Tuesday.
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Health insurers often act like monopolies — like a cable company or the Department of Motor Vehicles — because they resemble monopolies. Consumers, instead of being able to choose freely among insurers, are restricted to the plans their employer offers.
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Costs for employer-provided health plans are expected to rise more than 10 percent within the next 12 months, a jump workers may feel in their paychecks or through changes to their insurance coverage.
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Most homeless people in America are too poor to buy their own health coverage, but many also don’t qualify for Medicaid, the government-run health program for the poor.
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As Democratic leaders pursue their quest to provide millions of Americans with health care insurance, some advocates see an unlikely casualty of reform: youngsters now covered by the Children’s Health Insurance Program whom they fear could end up with reduced benefits.
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A coordinated, patient-centered health care system is one of the main promises of health care overhaul.
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There is a moral and financial imperative to strive for universal health care coverage. But the devil’s in the details of how and how quickly to get there.

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Policy experts say people are rightly concerned about the nation’s health care costs. But they also say there is nothing in the current proposals in Washington to suggest that the country is likely to embark on a system of medical rationing anytime soon.
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Lashed by liberals and threatened with more government regulation, the insurance industry nevertheless rallied its lobbying and grass-roots resources so successfully in the early stages of the health care overhaul deliberations that it is poised to reap a financial windfall.
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Among the most contentious issues in the national health care debate is how to pay for it. President Obama wants legislation that is "deficit-neutral over the next decade." Here are the basics of what a healthcare overhaul would cost and how the bill could get paid.
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As Washington wrestles with health care reform, states have been busy passing their own laws to allow many young adults to remain longer on a parent’s health insurance.
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A big component of President Obama and congressional Democrats’ plans to reduce the number of Americans without health insurance is a massive expansion of Medicaid coverage to low-income adults making less than $14,404 a year.
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One of the most widely accepted arguments against a government medical plan for the middle class is that it would quash competition — just what private insurers seem to be doing themselves in many parts of the U.S. Several studies show that in lots of places, one or two companies dominate the market.
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Senate Finance Committee negotiators are trying to bring down the cost of a broad health care bill, but new splits are emerging on whether to reduce subsidies for people to buy insurance, according to Senate aides familiar with the talks.
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President Obama and fellow Democrats are throwing around a big number in the health care debate — the number of people living in this country without health insurance.
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After 30 years of punishing caseloads and never-ending stacks of paperwork, Harry Shriver was getting ready to hang up his doctor’s coat and retire when he tried something new.
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With prospects fading that the Senate will include a government-run insurance option in health care reform legislation, congressional Democrats and Republicans are already sparring over an alternative -- a series of private regional cooperatives that advocates say could achieve the goals of a public plan without the potential for government interference.
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The White House and Senate Democratic leaders, seeing little chance of bipartisan support for their health care overhaul, are considering a strategy shift that would break the legislation into two parts and pass the most expensive provisions solely with Democratic votes.
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The Obama administration appears to be backing away from the idea that a health care overhaul has to include the option of a government-run insurance program. If this public plan is removed from the bills currently under construction in Congress, it could be replaced by nonprofit health insurance plans run on the co-op model, where people who buy the insurance are the ones who own the insurance company.
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You go to a restaurant, peruse the menu, take your waiter’s suggestions, and order a meal. But there is something odd: the menu has no prices and you have no idea what you will be required to pay until a few weeks later when the bill arrives in the mail.
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So what is the "public option"? And why has it become such a threat to an overall health care overhaul that on Sunday, the White House suggested President Obama would settle for a compromise - nonprofit insurance cooperatives?

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The idea of nonprofit co-ops has come to the fore in the health overhaul debate as the Obama administration retreats from the idea of a public, Medicare-like insurance program to compete with private insurers.
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Supporters of legislation that would require insurance companies to cover treatment for autism spectrum disorders have launched a grassroots push to get the bill through the Missouri General Assembly next year.
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Lesley O’Daniel, a nurse who works in rural Missouri, shook her head as she contemplated the nation’s emotional debate over health care reform.
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The White House has indicated that it could accept a nonprofit health care cooperative as an alternative to a new government insurance plan, originally favored by President Obama. But the co-op idea is so ill defined that no one knows exactly what it would look like or how effectively it would compete with commercial insurers.
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As prospects fade for a public, or government-run, option as part of health care reform, key senators are considering another model to create competition for private insurers: member-owned, nonprofit health cooperatives.
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The White House, facing increasing skepticism over President Obama’s call for a public insurance plan to compete with the private sector, signaled Sunday that it was willing to compromise and would consider a proposal for a nonprofit health cooperative being developed in the Senate.
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A centerpiece of President Obama’s health care agenda -- and of the bills being developed on Capitol Hill -- is extending insurance to all Americans. Here is a rundown of the basics about what health coverage looks like now and what may change
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Every Monday morning, primary health care arrives on a bus in Oran, a town of 1,264 in southeast Missouri that hasn’t had a doctor for at least 15 years, or maybe 30, depending on who you ask.
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Through the storm of words and catchphrases that fly in the name of "health care reform," there are real people. Some are struggling.

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How exactly would new health care overhaul legislation affect you? Click on the category below that best fits your situation and see what the major proposals currently before Congress would mean for you.
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With polls showing rising concern over the government’s grim financial situation, key Republicans and a growing number of Democrats say it will be hard to push a reform bill through Congress unless it reduces projected spending on health care and begins to bring the federal debt under control.
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That’s because Missouri, like all but 14 states in the country, doesn’t mandate coverage of autism in health insurance policies. (Illinois is the only Missouri border state to mandate such coverage.)
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The story has spread so fast even President Obama got asked about it at one of his town hall meetings. But no, the health care overhaul bill now working its way through Congress would not require seniors to learn how to die prematurely.
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A patient in Illinois was charged $12,712 for cataract surgery. Medicare pays $675 for the same procedure. In California, a patient was charged $20,120 for a knee operation that Medicare pays $584 for.
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One of the key issues in the health care debate is how to make health insurance more affordable. Front and center in the Democrats’ plans is something that has gotten little attention but could be central to cutting costs: an insurance exchange.
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Far from the hue and cry over health care legislation that is erupting at town halls across the country, many senior citizens are quietly confused about what an overhaul might mean for them.
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Fans and foes of President Obama’s push to overhaul health care descended on a local high school here on Tuesday to challenge him and hear him fight back against the criticisms — some outlandish — that have slowed the legislation’s progress.
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The co-op idea has appeared in both Senate and House of Representatives discussions of healthcare reform. Here are some questions and answers about how it would work.
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President Obama, taking center stage in an increasingly contentious national debate over health care reform, told a packed town hall meeting here Tuesday afternoon that "I need your help" to overcome what he called "wild misrepresentations" about the program by opponents and special interest groups.
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The government is not going to take over the health care system, and it will not tell the elderly what treatment they can receive, benefit illegal aliens or pay for abortions, Sen. Claire McCaskill said Monday.
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With lawmakers home for their August recess, a fierce battle has broken out over what precisely is in the mammoth health care bills being pushed by congressional Democrats.
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Each side hopes to win ground by boiling down one of the most complex policy discussions in history into digestible nuggets. For beachside viewers who might be more interested in iced-tea service than fee-for-service, here is a guide to the main fight points.
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A proposal to tax generous health plans could ensnare a broader swath of employers and workers whose benefits aren’t necessarily gold-plated.
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For two-and-a-half days, about 800 doctors, nurses, dentists and optometrists treated 2,700 uninsured and underinsured people, most from Appalachia. No one was asked for an insurance card. There were no co-pays. And there were no bills.
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Senior citizens are emerging as a formidable obstacle to President Obama’s ambitious health care reform plans.
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As the debate over health care heats up, the Beacon asked area members of the House and Senate where they stand at this time.
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With health care reform dominating the national conversation, U.S. Rep. Roy Blunt came to Southwest Missouri on Thursday to lay out his position to his constituents.
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These centers, which have seen their caseloads increase significantly with the growing number of uninsured Americans and the economic tumult of the recent recession, appear to be in line for a major rise in federal support and likely a corresponding crush in patients seeking treatment if a health care overhaul is passed.
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Senior members of the Senate Finance Committee, trying to put together a bipartisan bill to guarantee health insurance for all Americans, were told Thursday that their proposals might be unaffordable to states and to many low-income people.
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Senators headed home for their August break Thursday amid an escalating partisan battle over health care reform, with a small band of lawmakers hoping to keep their delicately negotiated compromise alive until Congress reconvenes in September.
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While lawmakers are home for the August recess, they’re likely to get plenty of questions from constituents about the big health bills being debated in Congress.
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Now, as Congress examines ways to overhaul the nation’s health care system, the co-op has found itself in the national spotlight as a model for a proposed co-op option consumers could consider along with private insurers.
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Gov. Jay Nixon made Columbia his first stop Thursday on a tour to outline his priorities for autism legislation.
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Senate negotiators are inching toward bipartisan agreement on a health care plan that seeks middle ground on some of the thorniest issues facing Congress, offering the fragile outlines of a legislative consensus even as the political battle over reform intensifies outside Washington.
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Gov. Jay Nixon is taking to the road to outline what he wants in legislation requiring autism insurance coverage for children.
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It’s a central goal of the president’s plan: Extending health care coverage to the millions of Americans who lack it. Question is, just how many million are uninsured?
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U.S. Rep. Roy Blunt said Wednesday that President Barack Obama’s proposed health care plan would cost more Americans good coverage than it would provide.
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As they work to overhaul the nation’s health care system, President Obama and his congressional allies have pledged to help small-business owners such as Rhonda Ealy and Kelli Glasser.
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I hate the health care system -- but don’t you dare mess with it. That’s a pretty apt summary of the American mind-set about health care -- and not just now, but for decades.
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Health care reform would be good for small businesses because it would enable them to obtain better insurance coverage for less money, according to a report issued by President Barack Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers.
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The U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee’s approval Friday of a bill overhauling the nation’s health care system reinforced the hopes and fears of Missouri’s political players on both sides of the debate.
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Confusing claims and outright distortions have animated the national debate over changes in the health care system.
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As Congress debates creating insurance "exchanges" as part of a health care overhaul, the failure of a similar effort in California may offer important insights, former participants in the program say.
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With Republicans mobilizing against the proposed health care overhaul, President Obama, Congressional Democrats and leading advocacy groups are laying the groundwork for an August offensive against the insurance industry as part of a coordinated campaign to sell the public on the need for reform.
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Democrats leave town for the August recess with frayed nerves and fragile agreements on health care reform, and a new bogeyman to fire up their constituents: the insurance industry.
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In rural America, many are too poor to afford basic care. People who can afford doctors often can’t find them. The lack of health care in small towns like Walsenburg is a problem Congress is just beginning to address.
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Amid a flurry of activity on health care legislation, the House left Friday for its month-long summer recess. The Senate will take off at the end of this week. Here is an update on where the debate stands in Washington.
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As lawmakers begin to flee Washington for a month-long recess, the White House team is retooling its message and strategy, hoping a more modest approach will reinvigorate Obama’s signature domestic policy initiative.
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House members headed home on Friday, leaving behind the outlines of a nearly $1 trillion health care overhaul that is sure to draw fire from a variety of interests, but also shows the beginnings of a consensus that would provide insurance for more Americans and give them new rights in dealing with insurers.
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Democrats narrowly pushed sweeping health care legislation through a key congressional committee last night and cleared the way for a September showdown in the House.
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Health care costs are killing small businesses. Their insurance premiums are rising dramatically and unpredictably.
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Sen. Max Baucus Thursday ended any hope the influential Senate Finance Committee would take up bipartisan health legislation this summer, kicking the issue to the fall amid lingering divisions over a bill intended to provide insurance coverage to tens of millions of Americans.
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Senate GOP negotiators sought Thursday to slow down health care talks, likely delaying a long-awaited bipartisan deal until after the August recess.
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The House Energy and Commerce Committee resumed work Thursday on major health care legislation, voting to establish a government-run health insurance plan, as top Republicans stepped up their criticism of the ambitious legislation.
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An increasingly intense battle over health care legislation in Congress will now shift to states across the country as lawmakers begin returning home for a month-long recess and outside groups prepare to flood the airwaves.
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The heath care bill that has been wending its way through the Senate Finance Committee is likely to contain a provision that President Obama opposed during his campaign: a tax on at least some employer-provided insurance plans.
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While you’ve been trying to follow the ins and outs of the health care debate, you’ve probably heard some reference to "gold plated" health plans.
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As polls showed eroding support for his overhaul of the nation’s health care system, President Obama spent Wednesday courting the majority of Americans who already have insurance and are most resistant to the proposed changes.
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President Obama’s ability to shape the debate on health care appears to be eroding as opponents aggressively portray his overhaul plan as a government takeover that could limit Americans’ ability to choose their doctors and course of treatment, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.
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Key lawmakers on Wednesday moved to cut roughly $100 billion from the cost of health care reform proposals as they sought to break weeks of gridlock on President Obama’s signature legislative initiative before Congress departs for a month-long recess.
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After weeks of fractious debate that threatened to derail President Obama’s health care overhaul, House Democrats on Wednesday reached a critical if fragile agreement that appeared to pave the way for the chamber to vote on a package in September.
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House Republicans on Wednesday unveiled a $700 billion health care plan that would offer tax credits to help people buy insurance, yet unlike Democratic proposals, wouldn’t require either individuals or employers to get coverage.
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Senator Bond opposes President Obama’s health care legislation, insisting that targeted changes in law would solve most of the nation’s health care problems.
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President Barack Obama, on the defensive and acknowledging the rising protests against his health care efforts, took some of the sharpest jabs yet at his opponents, accusing them of rallying opposition with scare tactics and hypocrisy.
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Lawmakers struggling to unclog negotiations over sweeping health care reform are focusing on a handful of areas in the country that seem to have cracked the health care code by delivering high-quality care at a bargain price.
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Senior House Democrats, seeking a health bill acceptable to rank-and-file lawmakers, are warming to a plan to tax insurers that sell high-end health policies.
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They held the tutorial in the Capitol basement. The leadership had set aside five hours, from 4 to 9 p.m. Monday, with one break for procedural votes upstairs.
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A bipartisan group of senators, uneasy with public plan’s prospects for passage, endorses cooperatives, which would offer a system of health providers or contract out for members’ medical services.
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An emerging consensus among a bipartisan group of senators is poised to shift the dynamic in the congressional debate over health care reform and could lead to a final product that sheds many of the priorities that President Obama has emphasized and that have drawn GOP attacks.
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President Barack Obama on Tuesday sought to reassure senior citizens that squeezing billions of dollars from Medicare spending won’t hurt their benefits.
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President Obama tried Tuesday to sell his health care plan to older Americans, as members of Congress said they were deluged with calls from constituents worried that their Medicare benefits might be cut to help finance coverage for the uninsured.
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A look at health care legislation taking shape in the Democratic-controlled House and Senate as President Barack Obama pushes to overhaul the system, cover nearly 50 million uninsured Americans and contain rising costs.
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A government-run or public-option health insurance plan threatens employers and workers, the Missouri Chamber of Commerce and Industry, along with 1,536 business groups, said Tuesday in a letter to Congress.
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As the debate over health care reform continues in Washington, D.C., a conservative organization is bringing the discussion to Cape Girardeau.
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Key congressional negotiators resumed talks Monday evening on the emerging health care legislation, scrambling to strike separate deals in House and Senate committees that would give momentum to the stalled reform effort.
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The fate of health care reform hangs on what President Obama and leading Democrats do in the next few weeks. In particular, it hinges on an effective response to moderate Democrats in the House -- known as "Blue Dogs" -- who are threatening to jump ship.
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The absence of some big players in the health care debate may be one reason why Congress and the Obama administration are finding it hard to find agreement.
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On the agenda is the revamping of the American health care system, possibly the most complex legislation in modern history.
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With the Obama administration’s top domestic priority struggling in Congress, supporters and opponents of the health care proposals are focusing on the constituency that both sides agree has become pivotal to the debate: the majority of Americans who have health insurance and are generally satisfied with their care.
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Prospects dimmed for getting a full House vote on a consensus health care bill this week, despite stepped-up efforts Monday by Democratic leaders in the chamber.
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A bipartisan group of senators on Monday reported progress toward agreement on a compromise health care overhaul while the House speaker suggested that any House vote on a health plan would be delayed until more was known of the Senate approach.
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A new government health insurance plan sought by President Barack Obama and congressional Democrats could coexist with private insurers without driving them out of business, an analysis by nonpartisan budget experts suggests.
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Health care reform took center stage Monday night in St. Louis. Senator Claire McCaskill’s staff expected a few dozen people to show up at Monday’s health care question and answer forum but more than 500 people shouted, pleaded and argued their points.
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A program that saved state money by reducing emergency room visits and hospital stays for home-bound Medicaid patients is another victim of the June state budget cuts.
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A proposal to tax insurance companies on their most-expensive policies appears to be gaining momentum in Congress and the White House, as lawmakers search for politically acceptable ways to fund a health overhaul.
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Lawmakers are considering options and costs for currently insured and uninsured Americans. Here are some key questions regarding the effort to overhaul the nation’s health care system.


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The problem with putting together a big proposal — like overhauling the nation’s entire health care system — with lots of moving parts and many different interests to please, is that every time you satisfy one important constituency, you upset another.
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White House officials and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi continued to say on Sunday that progress was being made on legislation to overhaul the health care system, but fiscally conservative Democrats remained less optimistic while Republicans remained steadfast in their opposition to it.
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Defying skeptics in her party, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi vowed Sunday to overcome lingering obstacles and pass health care reform in the House, restoring momentum to President Obama’s top domestic priority and order to her own unruly Democratic caucus.
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The major health care bills moving through Congress would require nearly all Americans to have health insurance. But as lawmakers struggle to achieve the goal of universal coverage, a critical question is whether the plans will be affordable to those who are currently uninsured.
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Why is it so difficult to get an agreement on overhauling America’s health care system? There’s a simple answer: "It’s going to affect everybody," said House Education and Labor Committee Chairman George Miller, D-Calif.

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President Barack Obama, citing a new White House study suggesting that small businesses pay far more per employee for health insurance than big companies, said yesterday the disparity is “unsustainable — it’s unacceptable.”
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President Obama says the primary goal of health reform is to rein in runaway spending, and he points to real-world examples in which doctors and hospitals have improved care and reduced costs.
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The Obama White House will seek to shore up support for its health care overhaul this weekend by reaching out to millions of small-business owners and employees.
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An all out effort to get President Barack Obama’s health care proposal through Congress by September is beginning, with the proposal facing tough challenges in both the Senate and House.
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Visiting the Cleveland Clinic this week, President Obama held up that well-known hospital as a model for the rest of the country. But for most of the nation’s nearly 6,000 hospitals, copying the Cleveland Clinic would be like asking the Durham Bulls, a minor league team, to copy the New York Yankees.
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President Barack Obama’s health care plan is in jeopardy because of serious concerns that costs will spin out of control. As much as anyone, it’s White House budget director Peter Orszag’s job to save it.
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White House officials negotiated furiously on Thursday to keep major health care legislation on track after the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, said his chamber would not vote on a health measure until after Congress returned from its summer recess.
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Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid acknowledged Thursday that his chamber is unable to pass health care reform before its August recess, a move that highlighted internal Democratic divisions on the legislation and is likely to result in significant changes to the shape of the final bill.
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As Craig Brown watched President Obama’s news conference on Wednesday night on his TiVo-equipped television, he kept hitting the pause button so he could throw questions at the image frozen on the screen.
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From Thursday’s street corner demonstration in Springfield to party-sponsored forums, health care reform appears to be a high priority. But crafting legislation that will garner enough support from lawmakers -- and voters -- may be tough.

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There have been committee meetings, numerous ideas and discontent from both sides of the health care reform debate. Some Rolla residents are taking to the streets to express their opinion on the issue.

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The Cleveland Clinic, the renowned medical center visited by President Obama on Thursday, embodies many features that experts believe are essential to both improving health care and controlling its cost.
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A growing shortage of primary care doctors could place a major burden on the U.S. health care system if President Barack Obama succeeds in extending medical insurance to millions of Americans who currently lack it.
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As Democratic Congressional leaders try to round up the votes to remake the health care system, they face a range of concerns about the cost and scope of the legislation among centrist lawmakers in each party whose support is vital to a deal.
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Even as the national business lobby ramps up its opposition to health care reform, there are signs that employers around the country are divided on the issue, reducing the force of an opposition push.
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President Barack Obama plans to visit the Cleveland Clinic Thursday, an institution he has held up as a model for delivering high-quality and cost-effective health care. But trying to replicate the clinic’s approach across the U.S. would pose difficult challenges.
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President Obama showed great fluency in the intricate details of health policy at his news conference on Wednesday night, but experts said some of his points were debatable.
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President Barack Obama Wednesday tried hard to create momentum for his health care overhaul plan, offering a lengthy, methodical — and at times defensive — explanation of why Americans should embrace his changes.
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He explains how people would gain from an overhaul and argues that sticking with the status quo will impose huge costs on ordinary families.
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The state that pioneered health care for all is about to take another leap into the unknown: paying for it.
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For many of the 60 million people living in rural America, inadequate and unaffordable health care is an immediate and growing problem.
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Missouri’s junior Senator thinks it will be months, not weeks, before Congress passes a health care reform bill.
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The health care debate in Washington has basically deteriorated into a choice between raising taxes or cutting care. But "that’s wrong," says Don Berwick of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement. "There’s a third way. It’s redesign."
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Some of the ideas proposed for U.S. health care reform could cost patients thousands of dollars a year out of their own pockets, and premiums could end up being too high, according to two reports.
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Fiscally conservative House Democrats forced leaders of their party on Tuesday to slow the pace of work on major health care legislation so Congress and President Obama could address their concerns about the cost of the bill, its impact on small businesses and the shape of a proposed new government health insurance plan.
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Urging lawmakers to move quickly to overhaul American health care, President Obama on Tuesday criticized the "politics of the moment" and said some in Congress were trying to put off decisions on legislation "until special interests can kill it."
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While the issue of health care reform has divided Democrats in the House and stirred relentless GOP attacks, members of the Senate Finance Committee have seemingly ignored the hubbub, and a presidential deadline, as they huddle daily in pursuit of a breakthrough bill.
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The industry that helped scuttle health reform 15 years ago with its "Harry and Louise" ads is back, voicing support for a central element of the Obama administration’s plans: making sure everyone is covered.
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The typical person watching from afar is left to wonder: What will this project mean for me, besides possibly higher taxes?
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If lawmakers can reach an accord, one thing is virtually certain: For the first time ever, every American would be required to carry health insurance.
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President Obama has promised to overhaul the nation’s health care system in a way that controls costs and expands insurance coverage.
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Already the least likely of any age group to have coverage, adults in their 20s face brutal job searches and more time uninsured because of the recession.
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As the national debate about health care reform grows more heated, Jim Henderson, president of Dynamic Sales of St. Louis, has his own deeply held opinion about the role employers should play.
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U.S. Labor Secretary Hilda Solis said Tuesday that $220 million in federal stimulus funds will be disbursed to programs across the country to train workers in health care and other high-growth industries.
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President Obama tried Tuesday to create momentum for overhauling the nation’s health care system, saying Congress is closing in on a plan that will provide care to all Americans.
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It might not be an election year, but the campaign is on for health care reform.
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It is crunch time for health care. Lawmakers who are trying to fundamentally remake one-sixth of the U.S. economy say this might be the most complicated legislation they have undertaken.
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As President Obama began a new push to overhaul the health system, Democratic Congressional leaders, bowing to unease among lawmakers and governors in their own party, on Monday suggested scaling back a plan to tax top earners to pay for the sweeping legislation and signaled a retreat from their ambitious timetable.
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The nation’s governors, Democrats as well as Republicans, voiced deep concern Sunday about the shape of the health care plan emerging from Congress, fearing that Washington was about to hand them expensive new Medicaid obligations without money to pay for them.
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Business is far from unified in its lobbying efforts for health-care reform. The disparity dilutes its power and may contribute to a plan no faction wants — or no plan at all.
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Opponents are growing more vocal as the American Medical Association says a government option as well as private insurance is necessary.
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Besides covering 38 million Americans 65 and older, Medicare helps pay for the health care of more than 7 million younger Americans who suffer from significant disabilities.
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Despite budgets ravaged by the recession, at least 13 states have invested millions of dollars this year to cover 250,000 more children with subsidized government health insurance.
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Congress continues its effort to pass health care legislation before the autumn leaves turn, opponents calling the consideration too hasty and supporters regarding it as time-critical.
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Harry and Louise have changed their minds about health care reform.
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Congress’s chief budget scorekeeper cast a new cloud over Democratic efforts to overhaul the nation’s health care system, telling lawmakers Thursday that the main proposals being considered would fail to contain costs.
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The House Ways and Means Committee approved legislation early Friday to overhaul the health care system and expand insurance coverage after a marathon session.
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Legislation moving forward in Congress would require nearly every American to carry health insurance.
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Better access to health care may be a little closer for Greene County’s uninsured and underinsured families.
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Americans are divided over how they want health care fixed and whom they trust most to do it, refusing to forge a consensus for or against President Barack Obama as he and Congress march toward a historic overhaul.
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Democrats ratcheted up an offensive against health insurers Wednesday, proposing $100 billion in new fees on the industry, as health care legislation took another step forward in the Senate.
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President Obama’s ambitious drive to overhaul the nation’s $2.3 trillion health care system cleared a key Senate committee yesterday.
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UnitedHealth Group is in "constructive" talks with lawmakers about how to best care for underserved communities efficiently, its chief executive, Stephen Hemsley, said on Wednesday.
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Health care legislation moves closer to floor debate in both houses of Congress.
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The Senate health committee cast a milestone vote Wednesday to approve legislation expanding insurance coverage to nearly all Americans, becoming the first congressional panel to act on President Barack Obama’s top domestic priority.
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Capping months of work, House Democratic leaders on Tuesday introduced their plan for a sweeping remake of the nation’s health care system.
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House Democrats on Tuesday unveiled sweeping health care legislation that would hit all but the smallest businesses with a penalty equal to 8% of payroll if they fail to provide health insurance to workers.
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House Democratic leaders took a big step toward guaranteeing health insurance for most Americans on Tuesday as they unveiled a bill that detailed how they would expand coverage, slow the growth of Medicare, raise taxes on high-income people and penalize employers who do not provide health benefits to their workers.
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The White House and Democratic congressional leaders, scrambling to pass health care bills within the next few weeks, are trying to keep the cost of legislation that expands coverage and controls costs to about $1 trillion over 10 years — a benchmark for moderates in both parties.
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Here are major provisions of the U.S. House of Representatives’ health care plan introduced by Democratic leaders on Tuesday.
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Retail giant Wal-Mart is parting company with many other retailers and businesses: Its executives are calling for health care reform to include a requirement that most employers provide health insurance coverage for their workers.
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Health care reform is shaping up to be a complicated battle with several options being tossed around in the Capitol Hill, while Rep. Jo Ann Emerson (R-8th District) remains undecided.
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Democrats now have a supermajority in the Senate. But their top priority, a health care overhaul, may well need the blessing of a veteran Republican, Iowa’s Chuck Grassley, if it has any hope of becoming law.
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He says Benjamin would be voice in health care debate.
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The president has been a cheerleader for reform, but he’ll soon need to address specifics: how to pay for it, and whether government-run insurance should be involved.
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The effort to pass a health-care overhaul is being frustrated by divisions among Democrats over a wide range of issues, from how to pay for the measure to its impacts on small business and rural areas.
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President Obama had a message on Monday for critics who think he has lost momentum in his bid to overhaul health care: “Don’t bet against us.”
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Most Americans say it’s important to overhaul health care this year, a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll finds, but they are less enthusiastic about some of the proposals to pay for it.
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Health care costs for U.S. businesses are seen rising by 9 percent in 2010, according to a PricewaterhouseCoopers PWC.UL survey, which showed that employers will expect workers to pay more of the bill.
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Pushing back against Democratic plans to overhaul the U.S. health care system, Republicans on Tuesday readied a less costly alternative they say will make insurance more affordable.
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