health care reform

About 18,000 New Mexicans who purchase individual Blue Cross/Blue Shield health insurance plans are about to see a 29.5  percent increase in their payments.  Another 2,700 individuals will see a 10 percent increase, and “a handful” in a couple of other plans won’t have an increase. Another individual insurance plan provider, Presbyterian Health Plan, will [...]

Gov. Bill Richardson was on Larry King Live last night to debate Gov. Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota. Pawlenty, a Republican, is considered a likely candidate for President in 2012.

While he hasn’t signed on to a letter being circulated in the Senate urging the use of reconciliation to include the public option in a health care bill,  Sen. Jeff Bingaman told radio reporters yesterday that the public option “should definitely” be included in a health care reconciliation package, if it could get the votes.

President Obama released what his administration is calling a compromise health care bill today, but many states are tired of waiting for Congress to address the nation’s broken health care system.
Some governors, frustrated by halted federal efforts to overhaul the U.S. health-care system, are introducing their own changes at the state level, reports the Wall [...]

A spokesman for Sen. Tom Udall, D-N.M., told The Independent that Udall is on board with a letter that calls for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., to use reconciliation to pass the public option on health care reform.

A bill that would oppose any mandate that New Mexicans buy a specific type of health care coverage failed Friday in the Senate Rules Committee on a 4-3 vote after very little debate. The sponsor, William Sharer, R-Farmington, said the bill would allow people to choose to remain uninsured (or “self-insured” as Sharer called it) [...]

On Wednesday we wrote about Republican gubernatorial candidate Allen Weh’s call for New Mexico Attorney General Gary King to join 13 GOP attorneys general in challenging the constitutionality of health care reform legislation that passed the Senate on Christmas Eve.
Later that day, our sister site The Washington Independent reported that at least one of the [...]

Republican gubernatorial candidate Allen Weh wants Attorney General Gary King to join 13 GOP attorneys general in questioning the constitutionality of a health care reform bill that is making its way through Congress.

The current health care proposal is “probably as close as we’re going to get to a credible health care reform proposal,” U.S. Senator Jeff Bingaman told the Farmington Daily-Times editorial board. Democratic leaders in the House and Senate and President Barack Obama have been working to reconcile the differences between the two versions of the health [...]

While Congress is still out of session, the wrangling over health care reform never ends. The latest news from Washington is that Democrats appear to have decided to forgo a traditional conference committee, and instead engage in a process known as “ping ponging” a bill.

After months of marathon hearings, partisan bickering and fiery floor debate, Democrats in both the House and the Senate have passed expansive health care reform bills. Now comes the hard part.

After months of debate and discussion, the United States Senate has passed a health care bill on a 60-39 vote. No Republicans voted for the bill, while no Democrats voted against the bill. The vote on the bill was the first Christmas Eve vote since 1895.
Both Senators from New Mexico, Tom Udall and Jeff Bingaman, [...]

Senate Democrats on Thursday approved a sweeping $871 billion proposal designed to extend coverage to tens of millions of uninsured Americans and slow the growth of runaway costs.

Though a vote was originally scheduled for Thursday evening, Christmas Eve, the Democratic and Republican leadership in the Senate have agreed to instead push the vote on health care reform forward to Thursday morning.

The U.S. Senate, early in the morning in a snowy Washington D.C., passed a vote on cloture over the health care reform bill. The vote to limit debate passed on a 60-40 vote, the smallest margin possible for successfully limiting debate.
All Democrats, and both independents who caucus with the Democrats, voted for limiting debate, while [...]