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Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid unveiled the Senate Democrat's proposal for health care reform entitled the "Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act."

With analysis from the Congressional Budget Office it is estimated the bill will extend coverage to 30 million Americans who are currently uninsured and cost approximately $849 billion over the next 10 years while still reducing projected budget deficits by $127 billion.

Read the full contents of the Senate's proposal

Sen. Harry Reid accused Republicans of trying to dodge a full Senate debate on health care.

Ed Hornick
CNN

November and December tend to be a typically slow time for Congress as it wraps up business before a new session begins.

But not this year.

The Senate is expected to soon return to health care reform, the legislative lightning rod of 2009. Most analysts expect it to be an engaging debate.

But will Americans be paying attention as they carve the Thanksgiving turkey and shop for the holidays?

Analysts say yes - and that Americans are more tuned in than ever.

"I do think the audience for this debate will go beyond 'inside baseball,' though it won't extend beyond the already politically engaged electorate," says Frances Lee, a political scientist with the University of Maryland. "I would expect this debate to be equally engaging, though it will also be far longer."

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American Cancer Society

Cancer is a group of diseases that cause cells in the body to change and grow out of control. Most types of cancer cells eventually form a lump or mass called a tumor, and are named after the part of the body where the tumor originates.

Breast cancer begins in breast tissue, which is made up of glands for milk production, called lobules, and the ducts that connect lobules to the nipple. The remainder of the breast is made up of fatty, connective, and lymphatic tissue.

• Most masses are benign; that is, they are not cancerous, do not grow uncontrollably or spread, and are not life-threatening.

• Some breast cancers are called in situ because they are confined within the ducts (ductal carcinoma in situ) or lobules (lobular carcinoma in situ) of the breast. Nearly all cancers at this stage can be cured. Many oncologists believe that lobular carcinoma in situ (also known as lobular neoplasia) is not a true cancer, but an indicator of increased risk for developing invasive cancer in either breast.

Find more facts and figures about breast cancer...

The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force's new mammography recommendations have raised controversy.

Elizabeth Landau
CNN

A vacation to Washington nearly a decade ago led to a life-changing revelation for Kathi Cordsen. Passing by a breast cancer awareness event, her mother blurted it out: Her doctor had just confirmed that she had breast cancer.

She'd found the lump during a self-examination.

Fortunately, Cordsen's mom had found the cancer so early that she was able to have a lumpectomy and didn't need chemotherapy or radiation. That's why, today, Cordsen checks her own breasts every day in the shower.

"It was such an inspirational thing to find out that it saved her life, that's for sure," said Cordsen, 57, who submitted her story to CNN's iReport. "It's just important, to want to live and take care of yourself."
New guidelines from the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force say that women age 40 to 49 don't need to have routine mammograms anymore and that breast self-exams aren't recommended in general. The group found no evidence that self-exams reduce breast cancer death rates, and it discourages teaching women how to examine themselves.

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The Senate is set to begin debating the contentious health care reform bill.

Ed Hornick
CNN

The Senate is about to embark on what could be the showdown of the year as top Democrats work to push through sweeping health care legislation.

The legislative chamber, however, is no stranger to history-changing debate. Lawmakers need to look no further than their predecessors to see how it's done.

Iraq

In 1991, Congress voted for the use of military force towards Iraq after the Saddam Hussein-led country went to war with Kuwait.

The action was the first time Congress voted for going to war since the Gulf of Tonkin resolution in 1964, which officially began U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War.

The Senate vote in 1991, however, was much closer than the vote over Vietnam, illustrating a deep divide over whether to get involved.

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The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force's new mammography recommendations have raised controversy.

Danielle Dellorto
CNN Medical Producer

Women in their 40s should not get routine mammograms for early detection of breast cancer, according to updated guidelines set forth by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force.

Before having a mammogram, women ages 40 to 49 should talk to their doctors about the risks and benefits of the test, and then decide if they want to be screened, according to the task force.

For women ages 50 to 74, it recommends routine mammography screenings every two years. Risks and benefits for women age 75 and above are unknown, it said.

The group's previous recommendation was for routine screenings every year or two for women age 40 and older.

The task force is composed of 16 health care experts, none of whom are oncologists. The group reviews medical data and bases recommendations on effectiveness and risks involved.

"All we are saying is, at age 40, a woman should make an appointment with her doctor and have a conversation about the benefits and harms of having a mammography now versus waiting to age 50," said Dr. Diana Petitti, vice chair of the task force.

While roughly 15 percent of women in their 40s detect breast cancer through mammography, many other women experience false positives, anxiety, and unnecessary biopsies as a result of the test, according to data.

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Rep. Bart Stupak

Brian Beutler
TPM

The Stupak amendment has touched off a furious argument among Democratic politicians and elites–one that could tank the entire health care reform project if it's not resolved by the time legislation comes up for a final vote in the House.

For the most part, the argument has been about justice. The Stupak amendment would forbid anybody who receives new government health insurance subsidies from buying policies that cover abortion. So why should women's health care be treated differently than other kinds of health care? Is it fair to prevent women, forced into the health care market, from buying any insurance policy she wants, even if they have some government assistance?

But somewhat less prominently, these same combatants have been at odds about what the practical effect of the Stupak amendment would actually be. There's substantial lack of clarity on that score–many say it's likely that there will be no abortion coverage in the exchange at all, and others hypothesize that, over time, the norms in the exchange will come to dominate the norms across the insurance market. At this point, that's all theoretical. But there is at least some data on the immediate practical implications of the Stupak amendment: It will, at least, directly and immediately impact a small, but growing number of poor and middle-class women.

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Jeffrey Toobin | Bio
CNN Senior Legal Analyst
New Yorker Columnist

Abortion is almost as old as childbirth. There has always been a need for some women to end their pregnancies. In modern times, the law’s attitude toward that need has varied. In the United States, at the time the Constitution was adopted, abortions before “quickening” were both legal and commonplace, often performed by midwives. In the nineteenth century, under the influence of the ascendant medical profession, which opposed abortion (and wanted to control health care), states began to outlaw the procedure, and by the turn of the twentieth century it was all but uniformly illegal. The rise of the feminist movement led to widespread efforts to decriminalize abortion, and in 1973 the Supreme Court found, in Roe v. Wade, that the Constitution prohibited the states from outlawing it.

Throughout this long legal history, the one constant has been that women have continued to have abortions. The rate has declined slightly in recent years, but, according to the Guttmacher Institute, thirty-five per cent of all women of reproductive age in America today will have had an abortion by the time they are forty-five. It might be assumed that such a common procedure would be included in a nation’s plan to protect the health of its citizens. In fact, the story of abortion during the past decade has been its separation from other medical services available to women. Abortion, as the academics like to say, is being marginalized.

The latest evidence comes from the House of Representatives, which two weekends ago narrowly passed its health-care bill, by a vote of 220 to 215. One reason that the Democrats won back control of Congress is that the Party adopted a “big tent” philosophy on abortion. The implications of that approach became clear when, during the health-care vote, the House considered a last-minute amendment by Bart Stupak, a Michigan Democrat, which proposed scrubbing the bill of government subsidies for abortion procedures. It passed 240 to 194, with sixty-four Democrats voting in favor.

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House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is doing everything in her power to get health care reform passed

Gloria Borger
CNN Senior Political Analyst

The story so far: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi does everything in her power to get health care reform passed by keeping her Democratic caucus together.

She keeps liberals by insisting on a public option. She works on fiscal moderates by re-jiggering it. She works on lowering the cost of the package. She pays for it by taxing millionaire couples, appealing to the class-warfare crowd.

And to keep the Catholic bishops (and their moderate allies) on board, she keeps severe restrictions on paying for abortion in the measure. The liberals, of course, threaten to bolt - but it remains in the final package.

This is not legislating; it's whack-a-mole.

The challenge is simply to try and keep your unruly team in line, and maybe pick up a stray vote or two from the opposition. If you succeed, it's not about bipartisanship. It's just salesmanship.

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