3/31/10 HC Reform Update by Mark Sanna: Under pressure from the White House, health insurance companies said Tuesday that they would comply with rules to be issued soon by the Obama administration requiring them to cover children with pre-existing medical problems. Karen M. Ignagni, president of America’s Health Insurance Plans, a trade group. Accordingly, she said, “we await and will fully comply with” the rules.

3/30/10 HC Reform Update by Mark Sanna: Now that Congress has adopted the big health care legislation, a lot of people are looking for more information about the bill in hopes of figuring out what it means for them, or how their members of Congress voted. A special section in today’s New York Times helps you make sense of the health care overhaul. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/30/health/30well.html?ref=health

3/29/10 HC Reform Update by Mark Sanna: Despite the new health law, some insurers say they do not have to cover some children with pre-existing conditions yet. The fine print of the law differs from the larger political message. If a company sells insurance, it will have to cover pre-existing conditions for children covered by the policy. But it does not have to sell to somebody with a pre-existing condition. And the insurer could increase premiums to cover the additional cost.

3/27/10 HC Reform Update by Mark Sanna: Speaker Nancy Pelosi signed the budget reconciliation bill that includes final revisions to the health care legislation on Friday, calling the bill “a matter of trust” between the two chambers of Congress. To complete the legislation, the House on Sunday adopted the base health care bill passed by the Senate on Dec. 24th, but only on the promise that the Senate would follow through and adopt a package of changes.

3/26/10 HC Reform Update by Mark Sanna: Congress on Thursday gave final approval to a package of changes to the health care overhaul, capping a bitter partisan battle. The bill, which Democratic leaders hailed as a landmark achievement, now goes to President Obama for his signature. The final House vote was 220 to 207, and the Senate vote was 56 to 43, with the Republicans unanimously opposed in both chambers.

3/25/10 HC Reform Update by Mark Sanna: With the Senate working through an all-night session on a package of changes to the Democrats’ sweeping health care legislation, Republicans early Thursday morning identified parliamentary problems with at least two provisions that will require the measure to be sent back to the House for yet another vote, once the Senate adopts it.

3/24/10 HC Reform Update by Mark Sanna: With the strokes of 20 pens, President Obama signed his landmark health care overhaul — the most expansive social legislation enacted in decades — into law on Tuesday, saying it enshrines “the core principle that everybody should have some basic security when it comes to their health care.”

3/22/10 HC Reform Update by Mark Sanna: President Obama will sign a landmark $875 billion health care reform bill into law at the White House on Tuesday. The bill passed the House of Representatives late Sunday night. A separate package of changes passed by the House on Sunday still needs to be approved by the Senate. The Senate cannot begin debate on the package before Obama signs the underlying bill into law.

3/21/10 HC Reform Update by Mark Sanna: The White House and anti-abortion Democrats led by Bart Stupak (D-Mich) have reached a deal on preventing the use of tax dollars for health care abortions. President Obama will sign an executive order that no federal funds will be used to help pay for abortions in the Obama Health Care Reform Bill. It's now apparent the White House has the 216 votes to pass the bill.

3/21/10 HC Reform Update by Mark Sanna: Democrats late Saturday night said the 216 votes needed to pass the bill were nearly within their reach, but acknowledged that the margin of victory would likely be razor thin even under their most optimistic scenario. Republicans said they still held out hope of derailing the legislation. Under the rule approved by the House Rules Committee shortly before midnight, the House will spend 2 hours debating both the Senate health bill and a budget reconciliation measure that includes revisions to the Senate bill. Once that debate is completed, the House will vote on the Senate bill. If the Senate bill is approved, the House would then vote on the budget reconciliation measure.

3/19/10 HC Reform Update by Mark Sanna: House Democrats initiated a 72-hour countdown Thursday on their yearlong effort to overhaul the health care system, unveiling a nearly final version of the legislation that promptly won additional support with a promise that the bill will more than pay for itself over the next decade.

3/18/10 HC Reform Update by Mark Sanna: House Democrats, gearing up for a possible vote on Sunday to pass health care legislation, pledged that the details they were about to publish would produce significant cost savings in the decades ahead. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office determined that the package of legislation would produce the largest deficit reduction of any bill adopted in Congress since 1993.

3/17/10 HC Reform Update by Mark Sanna: Democrats awoke on Tuesday to a double-barreled shot of criticism on two of the nation’s leading op-ed pages over lack of bipartisanship in the health care debate. The Wall Street Journal rebuked President Obama for not seeking a more cooperative approach. The New York Times op-ed page highlights what it describes as a major missed opportunity for bipartisan legislation.

3/16/10 HC Reform Update by Mark Sanna: In Washington, the House Budget Committee opened the formal legislative process by which Democrats hope to complete the health care legislation, perhaps even this week. By a vote of 21 to 16, the committee advanced a budget reconciliation bill, essentially a legislative shell that will contain the crucial revisions to the health care measure adopted by the Senate on Dec. 24.

3/15/10 HC Reform Update by Mark Sanna: As House Democratic leaders seek to corral wavering lawmakers ahead of a climactic vote in the coming days, there is no doubt that President Obama will be the cajoler in chief and that the White House will unleash all of its powers of persuasion in a last-ditch pitch to push the legislation through. The effort will include calling lawmakers into the Oval Office and highlighting what the White House says are specific benefits in the legislation for individual districts and states.

3/14/10 HC Reform Update by Mark Sanna: According to the National Catholic Reporter, Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good, a Washington-based advocacy group, sent a letter to members of Congress on Friday urging support for the Senate-passed health care bill and expressing its view that the bill contains sufficient provisions to prevent the use of federal money to pay for insurance coverage of abortions. The story caught the attention of the White House, which sought to publicize it.

3/13/10 HC Reform Update by Mark Sanna: Speaker Nancy Pelosi mobilized House Democrats on Friday for a final effort to pass an overhaul of health care, predicting approval in the next 10 days with help from President Obama, who delayed a trip abroad to try to win over wavering Democrats. Mr. Obama will travel to Ohio on Monday to push for passage.

3/12/10 HC Reform Update by Mark Sanna: Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the House would soon approve the Senate bill and a separate package of changes, using a procedure known as budget reconciliation to avoid the threat of a filibuster against the second bill in the Senate. House Democrats said Ms. Pelosi had assured them they would have at least one week to examine the text of the budget bill before voting on it.

3/11/10 HC Reform Update by Mark Sanna: President Obama announced a new plan to crack down on fraud and waste in government health programs, including Medicare and Medicaid. The administration said pilot programs offering financial rewards to private auditors had been “highly effective” and projected that the use of so-called payment recapture audits could recover at least $2 billion in taxpayer money over the next three years.

3/10/10 HC Reform Update by Mark Sanna: It’s not quite election season, but President Obama is on the stump, pushing his health care bill. Now, millions of dollars in political ads aimed at swaying Congress are hitting the airwaves. Those ads, by America’s Health Insurance Plans, aim to blunt White House criticism of insurance companies for raising rates.

3/9/10 HC Reform Update by Mark Sanna: President Obama challenged wavering members of his party on Monday not to give in to political fears about supporting health care legislation, asserting that the urgency of getting a bill through Congress should trump any concern about the consequences for Democrats in November.

3/8/10 HC Reform Update by Mark Sanna: This week, President Obama will begin making what White House officials are calling the “closing arguments,” focusing on steep increases in insurance premiums and his insistence that a comprehensive overhaul is needed rather than the incremental approach Republicans are demanding. Mr. Obama’s final push will include visits to Philadelphia on Monday and St. Louis on Wednesday.

3/7/10 HC Reform Update by Mark Sanna: 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.

3/6/10 HC Reform Update by Mark Sanna: Senator Robert C. Byrd, 92 (D-WV), and a fierce protector of Senate rules and precedents, is defending the Democrats’ plan to use a parliamentary maneuver called budget reconciliation to finalize major health care legislation. Mr. Byrd famously refused to support former President Bill Clinton’s effort to use reconciliation to pursue health care legislation in 1993.

3/5/10 HC Reform Update by Mark Sanna: President Obama, beginning a full-court press for his health care overhaul, met Thursday with insurance industry executives and House Democrats as party leaders on Capitol Hill struggled to figure out whether they could meet the president’s timetable for enacting legislation within a few weeks.

3/4/10 HC Reform Update by Mark Sanna: President Obama, beginning his final push for a health care overhaul, called Wednesday for Congress to allow an “up or down vote” on the measure, and sketched out an ambitious — and, some Democrats said, unrealistic — timetable for his party to pass a bill on its own within weeks.

3/3/10 HC Reform Update from Mark Sanna: Democrats are planning to use a parliamentary device known as reconciliation that would allow them to pass health care legislation with a simple majority vote in the Senate rather than subjecting the bill to the 60-vote requirement to overcome a filibuster. Republicans have denounced the use of the device on the health bill as short-cutting the regular process.

3/2/10 HC Reform Update by Mark Sanna: Rep. Nathan Deal (R-GA) will resign from the House next week, a move that likely gives the Democrats a little extra breathing room as they try to pass legislation overhauling the health care system. Mr. Deal’s departure will leave 431 members in the House, meaning Democrats would need 216 votes to pass their health care bill.

3/1/10 HC Reform Update by Mark Sanna: In an interview Sunday, Speaker Nancy Pelosi said she was working on changes to a Senate-passed bill that would make it acceptable to the House. Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, the No. 3 Republican in the Senate said it would be a “political kamikaze mission” to push through passage of a bill the American people didn’t support.