President Barack Obama’s healthcare bill has rallied support from Support from the Catholic Health Association, a group representing Catholic hospitals, which could prove helpful in persuading anti-abortion lawmakers to vote for the overhaul, providing critical votes in the House.

Carol Keehan, the group’s Chief Executive writing on the association’s web site says though the legislation is far from perfect, however, it is the first big step toward providing health care coverage to all Americans, making an important difference to millions of people.

After President Barack Obama urged lawmakers to set a vote on overhaul legislation sometime soon, stocks were mixed, with health-care stocks like Pfizer and Merck facing a drop. Better-than expected private-sector jobs and service-sector expansion reports saw Caterpillar and other economically sensitive stocks rising.

Ending a three-day winning streak, while still in the red, the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 9.22 points or 0.09% to 10396.76, down 0.3% for the year to date.

The general consensus emerging at President Barack Obama's health care summit is how best to rein in spiralling healthcare costs.

Agreeing with the assertions of Oklahoma Republican Sen. Tom Coburn that waste and abuse accounted for up to a third of the cost of entitlement programmes like Medicare and Medicaid, a major barrier to widespread insurance coverage.

Assuring the nation overhauling the nation’s health insurance system would result in immediate benefits for all Americans, President Obama urged Congress to reconcile differences, allowing the legislation to be signed into law.

The signing into law of the health insurance reform will give doctors and patients more control over health care decisions, even while imposing tough restrictions on insurance companies, lessening their control.

In June, President Barack Obama praised the non-profit Rochester, Minnesota-based Mayo Clinic and the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio, as national models for efficient healthcare, offering 'the highest quality care at costs well below the national norm'.

However, as of tomorrow one of Mayo Clinic's primary-care clinics in Arizona will no longer accept Medicare patients, since the government's largest health-insurance programme for the disabled and those 65 and older, fails to offer adequate compensation.

According to US officials, a 278-passenger Detroit-bound transatlantic flight was almost blown up by a suspected terrorist yesterday, before he was subdued.

The suspect, Abdul Mudallad of Nigeria attempted to destroy the plane with an explosive device, with President Barack Obama treating the incident as an attempted terrorist attack.

In his New Year gift to the thousands of unemployed workers, President Obama has signed a legislation allowing workers who have been laid-off, to continue to receive COBRA premium subsidies that were due to expire end-December for up to 15-months.

Including the extension in a Congress approved defense spending bill, the cut-off for COBRA subsidy eligibility has also been extended to 28th February 2010 from 31st December.

President Obama's newly established embryonic stem cell research policy will allow scientists to receive federal funding for stem cells obtained from excess fertility clinic embryos, to facilitate research, which President Bush's policy had earlier placed great limitations on, by restricting use of federal funds for embryonic stem cell research.

The Obama administration is renewing its efforts for compelling mortgage companies to convert temporary restructured home loans into permanent ones by year-end, in order to prevent foreclosures of houses belonging to home-owners, struggling to keep up with mortgage payments.