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President Obama says he wants Congress to send him health care legislation by fall.

WASHINGTON (CNN) - The struggle over health care reform is expected to reach a fever pitch Wednesday.

President Barack Obama, putting a significant chunk of his political capital on the line, will take his case for change to the airwaves while congressional negotiators tackle politically explosive proposals relating to coverage and cost control.

Overhauling the health care system is Obama's top domestic priority, but the initial proposals to reach Congress last week received a rocky reception. House and Senate Democrats are responding by intensifying their efforts.

They are holding four separate hearings Wednesday focusing, among other things, on the question of how to pay a price tag that may exceed $1 trillion.

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The RNC unveiled its first ad of the cycle Wednesday that takes aim at Obama.

WASHINGTON (CNN) –- The Republican National Committee slams President Obama’s plan to reform the nation’s health care system in a new television ad that is set to air Wednesday on national cable television.

The RNC also offers thinly-veiled criticism of ABC for broadcasting a live presidential town hall meeting Wednesday on the issue of health care, but not including GOP national leaders in the event. The RNC does not name ABC, but mentions that the president will appear on a "national TV network" to discuss the issue. Republicans have accused ABC of promoting Obama's health care plan, pointing to the extensive coverage the network is giving the subject on its morning, evening and late night newscasts. The network has denied the charge.

This is the RNC's first TV ad of the 2010 election cycle. It will not release further details about the ad buy, but the script hints that it will only run on Wednesday - timed to coincide with the ABC town hall.

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Negotiations between Democrats and Republicans over health care reform have stalled.

Washington (CNN) - Negotiations between key Democrats and Republicans in the Senate over health insurance co-ops as an alternative to a government-run health plan were at an impasse Monday over how much federal government involvement there should be in the creation and running of the co-ops, according to senators and aides involved in the talks.

The negotiations could hold the key to bipartisan compromise.

Most Democrats want a heavy federal presence to ensure the co-ops can adequately compete with the big insurers and help drive down costs, but Republicans say they will back co-ops only if the touch from Washington is very light. Republicans say anything more that that is akin to the government-run proposal they uniformly reject.

"It's clear they are not talking about anything close to a national plan with enough clout to keep the insurance companies honest," said Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-NY.

Schumer, an influential member of the Democratic leadership, has been working behind the scenes on a co-op plan that Democrats can live with.

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President Obama pitched his health care plan to the American Medical Association on Monday and today, a Senate committee is working on a massive health care bill.

WASHINGTON (CNN) - A Senate committee began the arduous work Thursday of debating and amending the first comprehensive health care bill to come before Congress this year.

The measure before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee is one of at least four expected proposals for overhauling America's ailing health care system.

At issue is how to best reduce the cost and increase the reach of the current health care system, which officials say is increasingly draining personal, corporate and government budgets while leaving 46 million Americans without health insurance.

President Barack Obama has made the issue a top priority, warning that failure to act now would bring far worse economic difficulties than the costs of plans under discussion.

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WASHINGTON (CNN) - Overwhelmed by problems trying to write a bill overhauling the nation's health care system, the Senate Finance Committee will postpone votes on the legislation until after the July 4th recess, two Democratic Senate sources confirmed to CNN.

The decision, which one source described as not 100 percent final, is a setback for Democrats who wanted the bill out of committee before the recess so the full Senate could have the entire month of July to debate health care reform.

Key stumbling blocks for the Democrats who control the committee include the high overall cost of the bill and the lack of any solid Republican support for the measure in its current form, one of the sources said.

The bill is different from the one the Senate HELP Committee took up Wednesday. But those two bills are expected to be merged in hopes of getting a final bill to President Obama by Oct. 15.

Rep. Eric Cantor says Republicans are drafting a plan to ensure all Americans have access to affordable coverage.

WASHINGTON (CNN) - House Republicans on Wednesday presented what they called a "sorely needed" alternative to Democrats' proposals to overhaul health care.

Republicans want to make sure all Americans have access to affordable coverage, Rep. Eric Cantor, the House minority whip, said Wednesday.

"We do so by making sure we keep down costs and incorporate the ability for folks to pool together to access lower costs, to bring private sector into the game and keep government out," Cantor said.

Neither Democrats nor Republicans have detailed how they would pay for their proposals. Rep. Roy Blunt, R-Missouri, said his party's plan will cost "far less" than that of the Democrats and "provide better results for the American people."

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(CNN) – Organizing for America, an arm of the Democratic National Committee dedicated to mobilize supporters around President Obama's agenda, is launching a new campaign to fight "special interest lobbyists and partisan ideologues" who are against reforming healthcare.

In an e-mail to supporters Thursday, Organizing For America Director Mitch Daniels writes, "Special interest lobbyists and partisan ideologues will now go into overdrive, spreading distortions and twisting arms in D.C. to water down the final plan - or stop it entirely."

Daniels also asks for contributions. "With your support, we can train volunteers, hire organizers, place ads, hold local educational events, bring constituent voices straight to Congress, and make sure your real life stories are heard louder than the lobbyists' spin," he writes.

Nancy-Ann DeParle holds one of the two key administration positions that former Senator Tom Daschle was slated to fill as health care czar.

(CNN) - One of the women in charge of the Obama administration's efforts to change the nation's health care system said adding a plan offered by the government is preferable to a mostly-private insurance system, and told reporters a lot work is going on behind the scenes to help achieve the President's goal of passing a comprehensive plan this year.

"We're making a lot of progress," Nancy-Ann DeParle, director of the White House Office for Health Reform, told a roomful of about 60 journalists Wednesday.

DeParle, on the job for about a month, holds one of the two key administration positions that former Senator Tom Daschle was slated to fill as health care czar before he pilled out of consideration because of tax issues.

She has spent much of her time trying to build consensus among the many and diverse parties key to achieving such a massive overhaul: she has met with 40 members of Congress, sat down with a wide variety of interest groups in an effort to help build consensus, and traveled the country attending regional forums examining the nation's health care system.

Whether a final health care bill includes a new health insurance plan offered by the government in some form is one of the thorniest issues.

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A McCain adviser speaks out on the uninsured.

(CNN) – A health care policy adviser for the McCain campaign told a newspaper reporter that nobody in the United States is technically uninsured, because everyone has access to hospital emergency rooms.

"So I have a solution [to the health care crisis]. And it will cost not one thin dime," John Goodman, president of the National Center for Policy Analysis, told the Dallas Morning News in an interview published Thursday.

"The next president of the United States should sign an executive order requiring the Census Bureau to cease and desist from describing any American – even illegal aliens – as uninsured. Instead, the bureau should categorize people according to the likely source of payment should they need care. So, there you have it. Voila! Problem solved."

Hospital emergency rooms cannot technically turn away anyone for financial reasons.

"So instead of producing worthless statistics that people fling around in vacuous editorials and pointless debates, the Census Bureau should produce meaningful numbers, identifying all of the sources of funds people will draw on if they need medical care," said Goodman, who helped write McCain’s health care plan.

That plan would use a combination of tax incentives and market competition to make health care more affordable. It is not a universal health care plan – it does not guarantee insurance coverage for every American.

Read more: Goodman talks to the Dallas Morning News

Take a look: Candidates' health care plans

UPDATE: McCain's campaign says they do not consider Goodman to be an official campaign adviser.

CNN=Politics Daily is The Best Political Podcast from the Best Political Team.

(CNN) - A day after Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Jr's speech at the National Press Club, Sen. Barack Obama decided that Wright is all wrong.

In the latest episode of CNN=Politics Daily, Suzanne Malveaux reports on Obama's effort Tuesday to cut his ties with Wright in the hopes of limiting the political fallout from Wright's return to the public spotlight.

Sen. John McCain also laid out his plan for health care reform Tuesday. Dana Bash reports on how the Arizona senator would like to treat the nation's ailing health care system.

Senior Political Analyst Bill Schneider has another report about health care. Schneider takes a look at how health care is increasingly becoming an economic issue for voters.

Carol Costello does a reality check on proposals by Sens. McCain and Hillary Clinton to provide a federal gas tax holiday.

Finally, Wolf Blitzer gives you an update about whether Sens. Clinton and Obama stand with the Democratic Party's all-important supderdelegates.

Click here to subscribe to CNN=Politics Daily.

John and Elizabeth Edwards are joined by their children in New Orleans as Edwards announced the end of his presidential campaign in January.

(CNN) – Elizabeth Edwards, wife of former Democratic presidential hopeful John Edwards, is picking sides in the Democratic nomination race – at least with respect to health care. In an interview that aired Wednesday on ABC’s “Good Morning America,” she threw her support behind Sen. Hillary Clinton’s health care plan.

“In order to ensure that we have universal coverage, we need to say everybody has to join,” Edwards told ABC’s Robin Roberts. “So, for that reason, the mandates that Sen. Clinton is talking about, I think are going to be more successful in achieving the goal,” she added.

Both health care plans have the same goals, said Edwards, but “I just have more confidence in Sen. Clinton’s policies than Sen. Obama’s on this particular issue.”

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Obama supporter Bill Bradley identified full disclosure as an issue relating to the Clintons.

(CNN) – Three supporters of Sen. Barack Obama took the opportunity, in a conference call with reporters Thursday, to suggest Sen. Hillary Clinton and former President Bill Clinton have not been candid with the American public.

Texans “are gonna want people to shoot straight. They’re gonna want straight answers,” said Texas State Senator Kirk Watson.

Citing Sen. Clinton’s latest campaign theme focused on ‘solutions,’ Watson also said residents of his state are going to asking whether Clinton’s health care plan is actually offering solutions or, instead, raising more questions – including how Clinton would enforce the individual coverage mandate in her plan.

Asked by a reporter about an ongoing issue regarding candidates releasing their tax returns, former U.S. senator Bill Bradley linked Sen. Clinton’s refusal to release her tax returns with her failure to disclose what the individual coverage mandate in health care plan would cost.

Representative Jim Cooper of Tennessee followed Bradley saying memos relating to Sen. Clinton’s earlier effort to reform health care during her husband’s administration also have not been disclosed.

“And, as long as we’re on the issue of full disclosure, President Clinton also hasn’t revealed who were the contributors to his presidential library while he was still in office,” added Bradley.

Texas is set to hold its presidential primary on March 4 and Clinton must do well there to keep alive her bid for the Democratic nomination. In 2006, Texas had the highest rate of uninsured residents of any state in the nation, according to the American College of Emergency Physicians.

Sen. Clinton has recently sought to contrast her health care plan with Sen. Obama’s during campaign stops and debates. Former President Bill Clinton also attacked Obama’s health care plan as inadequate while in Texas Friday.

The conference call was held on the same day that Clinton released a new radio ad in Wisconsin touting her health care plan. Wisconsin holds its presidential primaries on March 19.

–CNN Associate Producer Martina Stewart

CORALVILLE, Iowa, (CNN) - In his stump speech assault on entrenched corporate interests and health care companies Saturday, former Sen. John Edwards invoked the recent and controversial death of Nataline Sarkisyan.

Sarkisyan is the 17-year-old girl who died Thursday night at UCLA Medical Center, shortly after her health insurance company reportedly reversed its decision not to pay for a liver transplant.

– CNN's Carey Bodenheimer

Watch Elizabeth Edwards explain why her husband should win the White House.

WASHINGTON (CNN) - Elizabeth Edwards, wife of Democratic presidential contender John Edwards, D-North Carolina, was in the Situation Room Monday. She discussed healthcare, what it's like to be a candidate's spouse, and two of her husband's White House rivals - Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-New York, and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, R-New York. Watch Wolf Blitzer's interview with Mrs. Edwards.

Click here to see CNN's new political portal: CNNPolitics.com

WASHINGTON (CNN) - An association of doctors and nurses will air commercials criticizing the top three Democratic presidential candidates' health care plans during Wednesday night's debate.

The ads, paid for by the California Nurses Association, National Nurses Organizing Committee and Physicians for a National Health Plan, specifically target Sen. Barack Obama, D-Illinois, Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-New York and former Sen. John Edwards, D-North Carolina. They attack the candidates for including the option for Americans to choose their own private health insurance as part of their universal coverage plans.

"Being better than the Republicans on health care reform is simply not good enough," said Rose Ann DeMoro, Executive Director of CNA/NNOC. "All the candidates' proposals keep the insurance companies at the apex of power, and the health care industry uses their enormous wealth in lobbying and campaign contributions to corrupt the public debate."

The ads will run during the debate on MSNBC in Washington, D.C. and in New Hampshire and on the New England Cable Network.

–CNN Associate Producer Lauren Kornreich

Watch Jessica Yellin's report about the battle of children's health insurance.

WASHINGTON (CNN) - The House of Representatives approved a sweeping expansion of the State Children's Health Insurance Program on Tuesday, but by a margin short of the two-thirds needed to override President Bush's threatened veto.

The $60 billion, 5-year measure would expand the program to cover millions of middle-class families, paying for the expansion with
61-cent-per-pack tax increase on cigarettes. The vote was 265-159, with 45 Republicans joining all but eight Democrats in voting for the plan.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said the bill has overwhelming support and warned that Bush would "isolate himself" from the public with a veto.

"Let's hope and let's pray that a very big, strong, bipartisan vote tonight will send him a message to rethink his position," Pelosi said. She said a veto would give new meaning to the biblical injunction, "Suffer little children."

Bush has threatened to veto any expansion of the program beyond the $25 billion he proposed earlier this year. He demanded last week that Congress extend the program before it expires at the end of the fiscal year on Sept. 30.

Richardson proposed a plan that would allow seniors to get health care at home.

DAVENPORT, Iowa (CNN) - Democratic presidential candidate Bill Richardson proposed a "house calls" medical plan Thursday that would allow senior citizens to get health care at home they now can only get at the hospital.

The New Mexico governor unveiled the plan, called "Independence at Home," at the Divided We Fail/AARP/Iowa Public Television presidential candidate forum on health and financial security. He said it could save $13 to $16 billion a year by reducing emergency room visits and hospital admissions.

"Through electronic technology, they can get their care at home," Richardson said. "They can do it instead of having 13 doctors and having to go to the hospital the healthcare would come to them at home."

Richardson spokesman Tom Reynolds said the program would be entirely voluntary and would fall under Medicare, at no additional cost to the system.

-CNN Iowa Producer Chris Welch

Senator Hillary Clinton, D-New York

DAVENPORT, Iowa (CNN) - Hillary Clinton responded to a plan that Democratic rival Bill Richardson announced would bring health care directly to people in their homes–as opposed to forcing them to go to a hospital–by talking about her own mother.

"This is an issue that affects all of us," Clinton said. "My mother lives with us, as well, and we see it every single day."

Clinton press secretary Jay Carson said the candidate's mother has lived with the Clintons for "at least a couple of years" but that she¹s "as able and capable as they are."

"She just lives with them," Carson said.

Clinton made the comments at the Divided We Fail/AARP/Iowa Public Television presidential candidate forum on health and financial security.

She called for long-term care tax credit for people providing respite care. She said if the United States were to lose all it's caregivers, it would mean "a $300 billion cost to replace what is done out of love and out of family and other relationships."

-CNN Iowa Producer Chris Welch

Watch Gloria Borger's take on the health care and income tax proposals offered by Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and John Edwards.

WASHINGTON (CNN) - Senior Political Analyst Gloria Borger takes a look at Sen. Barack Obama's new income tax plan, Sen. Hillary Clinton's universal health care plan, and John Edwards's unique method for getting Congress to pass his health care plan if elected to the White House. 

Related: Obama's tax plan: Robin Hood Approach

Related: Clinton talks health care

Related: Edwards threatens to cut off health insurance for Congress

Watch CNN's John Roberts interview Sen. Hillary Clinton.

WASHINGTON (CNN) – One day after unveiling her universal health care plan, Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-New York, called criticism of her strategy "politics as usual" and defended the strategy as an effective way to give all Americans affordable insurance.

"I feel very good and quite confident that the parts of the plan that I have put together will find a lot of favor among people who know what we have to do to get to universal coverage," Clinton said Tuesday on CNN's American Morning.

Clinton, who was panned for taking a lead role in crafting a healthcare plan in her husband’s administration, also sought to assuage any concerns about her new plan.

"This is not government-run health care," Clinton said. "We're not creating any new bureaucracy. We're trying to build on what works and fix what's broken in our system. If you're satisfied with the health care coverage you have, you get to keep it, no questions asked."

Clinton also released an ad Tuesday touting her plan in Iowa and New Hampshire and will host a Web cast this evening on her presidential campaign Web site.

– CNN Associate Producer Lauren Kornreich

Related: Clinton and health care, take 2