parsa khan's List: REV Media Mashup: HealthCompare 1.21.2010

With Democrats reeling from the Republican victory in the Massachusetts special Senate election, President Obama on Wednesday signaled that he might be willing to set aside his goal of achieving near-universal health coverage for all Americans in favor of a stripped-down measure with bipartisan support.

Reporting from Washington - President Obama and congressional Democrats are rethinking their healthcare strategy in the wake of a Republican victory in the Massachusetts Senate race, giving serious consideration to abandoning the comprehensive approach in favor of incremental steps that might salvage key elements of the package.

It’s still unclear what the Dems are going to do about the health-care overhaul, now that they’ve lost their filibuster-proof majority in the Senate.

Determined to enact a health-care reform bill, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi struggled Wednesday to sell the Senate version of the legislation to reluctant Democrats, even as party moderates raised doubts about forging ahead without bipartisan support.

Well, Scott Brown has won the Senate election in Massachusetts, proving once again that, in America, anything is possible if you are extremely good looking and drive a pickup.

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Insurance-company stocks have risen on hopes that health care reform will be stillborn. The opposite ought to be happening. Reform would widen and enlarge companies' customer base, and, for the most efficient insurers, substantially higher profits.

Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) says federal employees need not worry about being left out of a provision in pending health insurance legislation that would allow state and local government workers and other unionized employees a five-year delay before possibly being hit by an excise tax on high-cost health insurance plans.

With the possible collapse of the Congressional health care effort, health insurers might seem to have reason to celebrate.