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WASHINGTON (CNN) - President Obama talks often about all of the forces lining up against his health care plan. But there's one critic who has remained relatively mum in the debate.

David Scheiner, a Chicago, Illinois-based doctor, has taken a hard look at the president's prescription for health care reform and sees bad medicine.

"This isn't that kind of health care plan that's going to work," he said.

So what makes Scheiner so special? He was Obama's personal physician for 22 years, and voted for the former Illinois senator in the 2008 presidential election.

Scheiner thinks the president's plan doesn't go far enough.

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WASHINGTON (CNN) - As President Obama presses the House and Senate to finalize their own versions of health care reform, the real battle over the issue is just heating up - and it's about to get very personal.

Before Washington takes another step on health care reform, Hilda Sarkisyan wants the politicians to hear her story.

"If we don't change this now, my story is going to be their story," she says.

Sarkisyan's 17-year-old cancer-stricken daughter Nataline made national headlines when Cigna, the family's health insurance company, denied coverage for a liver transplant in late 2007.

The Sarkisyan family made repeated appeals at news conferences. Cigna initially declined to cover the operation, then reversed its decision. Nataline Sarkisyan died hours after the company's reversal.

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CINCINNATI, Ohio (CNN) – In his first trip to Ohio since the election, Vice President Joe Biden jumped back into campaign mode, setting his sights on Republican critics of the $787 billion stimulus plan.

"All the talk about how we're gonna waste all this money, that's a dog that ain't barked yet," Biden said in Cincinnati, Ohio, on Thursday. "And it's not gonna bark on my watch."

It appeared to be a direct shot at House Minority Leader John Boehner of Ohio, who posted a Web video featuring a bloodhound on the hunt for stimulus jobs.

"This is Ellie Mae, and she hasn't found any stimulus jobs. And neither have we," Boehner says in the video.

But some stimulus money has found its way to Boehner's own district in Butler County, Ohio.

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WASHINGTON (CNN) - President-elect Barack Obama is already making presidential history by naming - or at least his transition team is leaking to the press - his Cabinet picks faster than nearly all of his predecessors.

"If we do not act swiftly and boldly, most experts believe that we could lose millions of jobs next year," Obama said Monday.

With an economic crisis spiraling out of control and a lame duck in the oval office, presidential scholars say the next commander in chief simply had no choice.

Watch: Obama cabinet vetting process underway

"This is really unprecedented. But it's an unprecedented situation," said Larry Sabato, a presidential scholar at the University of Virginia. "Obama is doing what the public and the markets demand be done - and that is to show that the next president is really in charge before he even takes the oath of office."

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WASHINGTON (CNN) - The transition team for President-elect Barack Obama has indicated it plans to hit the ground running with what could be big changes for the country.

But that massive agenda has Republicans - and some Democrats - wary of moving too fast.

Democrats are eyeing an ambitious agenda with plans to take on the economy, health care, energy and education - issues that are all intertwined, according to a leader of Obama's transition team.

"So these are all core, if you will, economic questions, and they need to be tackled together, and I think he'll have a program and a strategy to move aggressively across all those fronts," John Podesta said Sunday on CNN's "Late Edition."

A similar message is coming from Rep. James Clyburn, one of Obama's chief allies in Congress.

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