health insurance news

 Declaring a core part of the new healthcare law unconstitutional, a federal judge in Virginia has launched President Obama's signature domestic achievement into a gantlet of conservative-leaning courts that will almost certainly conclude at the Supreme Court just as the 2012 election is cresting.

In the first such decision since Obama signed the law in March, U.S. District Judge Henry Hudson ruled Monday that Congress had overstepped its power in requiring Americans to get health insurance by 2014.

Eight months in office, Barack Obama has now pushed closer than any other president in generations to creating a basic health care safety net for working Americans. Yet the fate of legislation delivering on his goal is far from certain: Republicans are nearly unified in opposition, Democrats hardly united in support.

Indeed, few if any of the major arguments about the scope and costs of the historic undertaking are settled as congressional leaders prepare to take legislation to the floor in the next two weeks.

As many Americans had hoped, President Obama is in office and the wheels appear to be in motion. The health care situation in the United States is just as grim as the rest of our economy, so it’s encouraging

The Obama administration is signaling to Congress that the president could support taxing some employee health benefits, as several influential lawmakers and many economists favor, to help pay for overhauling the health care system.

The proposal is politically problematic for President Obama, however, since it is similar to one he denounced in the presidential campaign as “the largest middle-class tax increase in history.” Most Americans with insurance get it from their employers, and taxing workers for the benefit is opposed by union leaders and some businesses.

John McCain's fix for health-care reform is based the logical Republican remedy: competition in the marketplace.

"John McCain is putting the American family in charge," said Douglas Holtz-Eakin, McCain's chief policy adviser, a former director of the Congressional Budget Office and a member of President Bush's Council of Economic Advisers.