Senate-Elect Brown vs. Healthcare

Democrats scramble on health care after GOP win CNN — Nervous Democrats debated Wednesday how to save a health care reform plan suddenly pushed to the brink of defeat by an upset GOP Senate win in Massachusetts. Senator-elect Scott Brown's victory in one of the most progressive states in the nation raised already-high anxiety levels among Democrats looking ahead to midterm elections. It also stripped Democrats of their 60-seat Senate supermajority, giving Republicans enough votes to block any measure in the chamber. click to read complete article

US Health Insurers Enter Earnings Season With Changed Climate Wall Street Journal — UnitedHealth Group Inc. (UNH) and its peers seem to face a more temperate political climate than anticipated as the health insurer opens the industry's earnings-reporting season Thursday. Following Republican Scott Brown's upset victory in the Massachusetts special U.S. Senate election Tuesday, investors are likely to be at least as focused on UnitedHealth's thoughts on the health-care reform outlook and other trends for this and future years as on how the company performed in the fourth quarter of 2009. UnitedHealth is the largest U.S. managed-care company by revenue and is considered an industry bellwether. click to read complete article

White House Reduces Expectation of Passing Health Care Reform This Year Fox News — The Obama White House, shell-shocked by the victory of Republican Scott Brown in the Massachusetts U.S. Senate special election, no longer predicts Congress will pass health care this year. "I think it's always hard to tell how these things sort out in the first hours," President Obama's senior adviser David Axelrod told Fox News on Wednesday when asked if health care was now dead. "I think people are trying to figure this out. We'll know more soon. I don't believe we came all this way and are going to walk away from it. I think it would be a terrible mistake." click to read complete article