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The 13-10 vote in the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee split along party lines, with its top Republican arguing it costs too much and would ration care to Americans. But Sen. Edward Kennedy, its chairman, said, “We have done the hard work that the American people sent us here to do.”

“We know, however, that our work is not over — far from it,” Kennedy said in a written statement. The senator is battling cancer and voted by proxy.

“As we move from our committee room to the Senate floor, we must continue the search for solutions that unite us, so that the great promise of quality affordable health care for all can be fulfilled,” Kennedy said in the statement.

Health care has long been one of the Massachusetts Democrat’s pet issues. Connecticut Sen. Chris Dodd, who led the committee in Kennedy’s absence, said the bill is the first of several proposals “to grapple with the issue that has defied resolution through seven presidents and many Congresses since the 1940s.”

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WASHINGTON – The Obama White House left open the possibility Sunday that the president would break a campaign promise and raise taxes on people earning less than $250,000 to support his health care overhaul agenda.

White House adviser David Axelrod said the administration wouldn’t rule out taxing some employees’ benefits to fund a health care agenda that has yet to take final form. The move would be a compromise with fellow Democrats, who are pushing the proposal as a way to pay for the massive undertaking without ballooning the federal deficit.

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One of the Democratic advisers told CNN there is fear within the party that the president’s signature issue is “on the rocks” because of dramatically high cost estimates for separate bills being drafted by Sens. Edward Kennedy, D-Massachusetts and Max Baucus, D-Montana.

The Congressional Budget Office’s estimate for the Kennedy bill — that it will cost $1 trillion and yet leave millions of Americans without health insurance — has given Republicans strong political ammunition to charge reform may be too expensive at a time of massive federal deficits.

“We’re going to need the White House to step it up a little bit and get more engaged,” said a second Democratic adviser, who acknowledged concerns that Republicans are gaining steam in the message battle. “We’ve got some time to sort this out, but decision time is just around the corner.”

Full Story At  msnbc.com

WASHINGTON – Senators are considering three different designs for a new government health-insurance plan that middle-income Americans could buy into for the first time, congressional officials said Friday.

Officials familiar with the proposals said senators plan to debate them in a closed meeting next week. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because details of the controversial plans have not been released.

Full Story At news.yahoo.com

WASHINGTON – Here’s the best-case scenario for the government’s plans to spend $19 billion on computerized medical records: seamless communication among doctors and patients, and far fewer mistakes.

And the worst-case: $19 billion goes down the drain.

The medical industry is hoping for the first outcome, even while some fear the second, as the Health and Human Services Department tries to get hundreds of thousands of doctors to quit using paper files and join the digital age.

The money for the massive undertaking is in the economic stimulus bill that President Barack Obama signed into law last month.