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WASHINGTON – House Democratic leaders abandoned a long struggle to appease the most ardent abortion opponents in their ranks, gambling Thursday that they can secure the support for President Barack Obama’s sweeping health care legislation with showdown votes looming next week.

In doing so, they are all but counting out a small but potentially decisive group whose views on abortion coverage have become the principal hang-up for Democrats fighting to achieve the biggest change in American health care in generations

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WASHINGTON – A moderate Democrat insisted Tuesday she remained opposed to pushing a health care bill through the Senate with a simple majority vote, despite saying she wanted to see what was in the legislation.

Sen. Blanche Lincoln, D-Ark., who is facing a more liberal Democratic primary challenger as well as GOP opposition, said those comments didn’t represent a change of heart on her stance against the controversial majority-vote procedure known as “reconciliation.”

“I don’t support reconciliation! All I said was I want to see what’s in it,” Lincoln told reporters outside the Senate floor.

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WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama accused insurance companies of placing profits over people and said Republicans ignored long-festering problems when they held power as he sought to build support Monday for swift passage of legislation stalled in Congress.

“Let’s seize reform, the need is great,” Obama said at an appearance that had the feel of a campaign rally.

“How much higher do premiums have to rise before we do something about it?” said Obama, making the first in an expected string of out-of-town trips to pitch his plan to remake the health care system.

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WASHINGTON – In private pitches to Democrats, President Barack Obama says he will persuade Congress to pass his health care overhaul even if it kills him and even if he has to ask deeply distrustful lawmakers to trust him on a promise the White House doesn’t have the power to keep.

That, in a sometimes darkly joking way, is what the president is telling Democratic House members as he begins an all-out push to coax Congress into passing his proposals despite voters’ misgivings and Republicans’ dire warnings.

“He made the case, ‘Listen, we put in a very hard year working on health care reform and the time for action is now,’” said Rep. Ron Kind, D-Wis., one of several Democrats who met with Obama at the White House on Thursday.

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Washington (CNN) — President Obama has made it clear that it’s time for a simple up and down vote on his health care plan, noting that Americans are “waiting for us to act.”

But getting to the vote might not be so simple.

Republicans continue to voice their opposition to the reform bill. Some, such as House Minority Leader John Boehner, have called for scrapping the bills entirely and starting over.

Two Democratic aides said the goal is for the House to vote on the Senate health care bill and a vote on reconciliation instructions before Obama leaves on March 18 for his trip to Australia and Indonesia.

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Washington (CNN) — The Obama administration raised the stakes in the health care debate Monday, releasing a new blueprint that seeks to bridge the gap between measures passed by the Senate and House of Representatives last year.

If enacted, the president’s sweeping compromise plan would constitute the biggest expansion of federal health care guarantees since the enactment of Medicare and Medicaid more than four decades ago. The White House said it would extend coverage to 31 million Americans.

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Washington (CNN) — Michelle Obama expressed confidence Tuesday that Congress will enact some sort of change to improve the nation’s health care system.

“We don’t have a choice,” the first lady told CNN’s Larry King in an interview that aired Tuesday night. “When we look at these statistics, we’re spending billions of dollars on preventable diseases, and new health care legislation could go a long way to improving prevention, first and foremost.”

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Washington (CNN) — President Obama’s bipartisan meeting on health care reform planned for February 25 will be broadcast live, a senior administration official said Monday.

Coverage details were not complete, but the official said the White House expected “the whole thing to be live.”

The half-day meeting is an attempt by the Obama administration to rescue health care legislation, a top domestic priority for the president.

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Washington (CNN) — Only three in ten Americans say they want Congress to pass legislation similar to the health care reform bills that have already been approved by the House and Senate, according to a new national poll.

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(CNN) — Democrats and Republicans woke up this week with a fresh perspective on the midterm elections.

To many political observers, the election of Republican Scott Brown is a game changer. He overcame what at one point was a 30-point deficit to defeat Democrat Martha Coakley in a special election to serve out the remainder of the late Ted Kennedy’s Senate term.