The Supreme Court announced today that its hearings in the lawsuit challenging the new federal health care reform law will begin on March 26 and will last three days.

Florida is leading the legal challenge to the Affordable Care Act, a suit that includes 25 other states. State officials have argued that the alleged unconstitutionality of the individual mandate is grounds for striking the bill in its entirety. That argument has not been upheld in lower court decisions.

Both parties have worked actively to make sure that the Supreme Court is able to reach its decision before the 2012 presidential election.

The Wall Street Journal reports that the “main part” of the hearing “will take place on Tuesday, March 27, with a two-hour argument over the minimum-coverage provision, which starting in 2014 will require most Americans to carry health insurance.”

The report from the nonpartisan, nonprofit group found a shift from manufacturing to service jobs and from long-term to short-term employment has left fewer Americans uninsured, and the recession has intensified those trends.

“Employer-provided health insurance has become more rare and more expensive, leaving the economically weakest workers to fend for themselves,” said Noga O’Connor, an IPP research associate and co-author of the report.

The IPP estimated 40 percent of the labor force is now “non-standard,” meaning part-time, temporary, on-call and contract workers. Those workers are less likely to have health insurance, the report found.

Another 2009 report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics found the number of involuntary part-time workers rose from 4.2 million in 2005 to 9.3 million in 2009.

“This has serious implications for policy makers as they consider implementation or changes in the health reform law,” O’Connor said.

The report also found a relationship between the race, age and income of workers, and whether they are “non-standard” workers or have insurance.

“Older, better-educated and better-earning individuals are significantly more likely to be insured and to be standard workers,” the report reads. “We also found a significant race effect — when comparing Black, Hispanic and White workers, Hispanic workers are significantly less likely to be insured and to be standard workers.”

The report also found health insurance is related to job turnover. Workers without coverage are about twice as likely to change their job, and more than seven times as likely to lose their job.

Andrew Cannon of the IPP said the report shows the rapid increase in health costs is only one reason for the steady erosion of employer-sponsored insurance.

“A big reason also is simply that movement of people into jobs that are not likely to offer insurance,” Cannon said.

The report was funded by the U.S. Department of Labor.

Surging in the national presidential polls, Perry joined seven other Republican White House hopefuls at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, Calif. NBC Nightly News host Brian Williams and Politico’s John F. Harris grilled candidates on foreign policy, health care, national security and climate change, leaving social issues like abortion and same-sex marriage mostly out of the dialogue.

Moderators asked the governor to address Texas’ substantial lag in key areas when compared to other states, including its position as last in number of uninsured residents and its low high school completion rates. When questioned about the cause of the state’s staggering number of those without health care — 26 percent of those under age 65 — Perry pointed to the federal government as the culprit.

Perry also downplayed the consequences of public education cuts made this legislative session under his governorship — $4 billion slashed from K-12 classrooms, leaving an estimated 12,000 teachers out of work — calling them “thoughtful reductions absorbed by our schools.”

Perry jumped back into echoing his past controversial statements about Social Security, once again calling it a “Ponzi scheme” — a sentiment expressed in his anti-Washington book “Fed Up!” which has become an anchor for his campaign rhetoric.

“Anybody that’s for the status quo with Social Security today is involved with a monstrous lie to our kids, and it’s not right,” he said.

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who many consider Perry’s most formidable opponent, shot back with a defense of the system and its benefit to senior citizens saying, “our nominee has to be someone who isn’t committed to abolishing Social Security but is committed to saving Social Security.”

Often evading direct answers to questions, Perry took the opportunity to swing his replies back to his jobs creation record, figures revealed to be misleading by previous reporting from the Texas Independent. Perry claims to have secured Texas as the hub for job growth nationally, though many of those jobs are low-paying ones.

“We’ve created 1 million jobs in the state of Texas at the same time America lost 2.5 million,” said Perry. But from 2007 to 2010, the number of Texans earning minimum wage or less increased 150 percent — 330,000 jobs — solidifying Texas as the nation’s minimum wage jobs leader, a fact moderators were quick to point out.

“95 percent of jobs we created were above minimum wage,” Perry countered — though his campaign’s justification for that statistic was a 2010 measure, that 5.3 percent of all Texas jobs were hourly minimum wage ones. Only hourly jobs — just over half the total jobs in Texas — can be factored into minimum wage measures, but of those, 9.5 percent of them are at or below the minimum wage.

Perry’s “95 percent of jobs” measure is misleading, then, because he’s not talking at all about jobs “we created,” but total jobs in Texas last year. Under Perry’s watch, the proportion of hourly jobs at or below the minimum wage rose from 5.8 percent in 2000 to 9.5 percent in 2010 — but as PolitiFact reported during the 2010 Texas governor’s race, increases in how much minimum wage pays complicate the question. It’s impossible to tell how many of those are new jobs added at minimum wage, and how many are old jobs drawn into the measure because the minimum wage was raised.

Without getting bogged down in his statistics, Romney took aim at other aspects of Perry’s job growth record, pointing to Texas’ lack of state income tax, its status as a “right-to-work” state and rich natural resources as contributing factors, opening up a heated exchange between the two presidential hopefuls.

“Gov. Perry doesn’t believe he created those things. If he tried to say that, it’s like Al Gore saying he created the Internet,” said Romney.

Perry went back to statistics, answering, “We created more jobs in the last three months in Texas than [Romney] created in four years in Massachusetts.” He said former Democratic Gov. Michael Dukakis created three times more jobs than Romney did. Romney charged back, claiming George W. Bush and his predecessor created jobs at a faster rate than Perry.

During his first presidential debate Perry said, “I kind of feel like the piñata here at the party,” but the GOP contender didn’t shy from swinging back at his opponents, including U.S. Congressman Ron Paul (R-Texas), who noted Perry’s support for Hillary Clinton’s health care plan while he was Texas Agriculture Commissioner. Perry responded with some old dirt of his own, bringing up a letter Paul wrote to Ronald Reagan in the late 80s, renouncing the former president after the country became mired in massive debt as result of his policies.

Perry did own what’s likely to be the night’s most remembered moment, late in the debate when he was asked if he has lost sleep over the 234 executions he’s presided over as Texas governor. Before he could answer, the question received a chilling, immediate round of applause from the audience. Perry said no, he didn’t lose sleep over it, “I think Americans understand justice.”

Minor changes to the reconciliation bill in the Senate mean that the proposal now moves to the House, where Democratic leaders could pass it as early as tonight.

The bill would then move to the White House, where Obama will sign it into law.

Update: Three Democrats joined every Republican in opposing the measure: Ben Nelson (Neb.), Blanche Lincoln (Ark.) and Mark Pryor (Ark.).

Stupak and co. have claimed that the bill — which would allow exchange plans to offer abortion coverage, but require patients to write two checks to buy the abortion coverage separately — effectively subsidizes plans that offer abortion (a violation, they say, of the Hyde Amendment). They want a ban on subsidies to any plan that offers abortion coverage at all, forcing women to buy separate policies for those services. The executive order clarifies that the Democrats’ bill ”maintains current Hyde Amendment restrictions governing abortion policy and extends those restrictions to the newly-created health insurance exchanges.”

Stupak had also objected to the billions of dollars in the bill earmarked for community health centers and clinics. Abortion opponents fear that Planned Parenthood and other groups offering abortion services might benefit from that funding, even though current federal law already bans those groups from using the federal money for abortion services. Today’s executive order stipulates that “the Hyde language shall apply to the authorization and appropriations of funds for Community Health Centers.”

Below is the full text of the executive order:

ENSURING ENFORCEMENT AND IMPLEMENTATION OF ABORTION RESTRICTIONS IN THE PATIENT PROTECTION AND AFFORDABLE CARE ACT

By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, including the “Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act” (approved March __, 2010), I hereby order as follows:

Section 1. Policy. ?Following the recent passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (“the Act”), it is necessary to establish an adequate enforcement mechanism to ensure that Federal funds are not used for abortion services (except in cases of rape or incest, or when the life of the woman would be endangered), consistent with a longstanding Federal statutory restriction that is commonly known as the Hyde Amendment. The purpose of this Executive Order is to establish a comprehensive, government-wide set of policies and procedures to achieve this goal and to make certain that all relevant actors–Federal officials, state officials (including insurance regulators) and health care providers–are aware of their responsibilities, new and old. ??The Act maintains current Hyde Amendment restrictions governing abortion policy and extends those restrictions to the newly-created health insurance exchanges. Under the Act, longstanding Federal laws to protect conscience (such as the Church Amendment, 42 U.S.C. §300a-7, and the Weldon Amendment, Pub. L. No. 111-8, §508(d)(1) (2009)) remain intact and new protections prohibit discrimination against health care facilities and health care providers because of an unwillingness to provide, pay for, provide coverage of, or refer for abortions.??Numerous executive agencies have a role in ensuring that these restrictions are enforced, including the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), and the Office of Personnel Management (OPM).

Section 2. Strict Compliance with Prohibitions on Abortion Funding in Health Insurance Exchanges. The Act specifically prohibits the use of tax credits and cost-sharing reduction payments to pay for abortion services (except in cases of rape or incest, or when the life of the woman would be endangered) in the health insurance exchanges that will be operational in 2014. The Act also imposes strict payment and accounting requirements to ensure that Federal funds are not used for abortion services in exchange plans (except in cases of rape or incest, or when the life of the woman would be endangered) and requires state health insurance commissioners to ensure that exchange plan funds are segregated by insurance companies in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles, OMB funds management circulars, and accounting guidance provided by the Government Accountability Office.

I hereby direct the Director of OMB and the Secretary of HHS to develop, within 180 days of the date of this Executive Order, a model set of segregation guidelines for state health insurance commissioners to use when determining whether exchange plans are complying with the Act’s segregation requirements, established in Section 1303 of the Act, for enrollees receiving Federal financial assistance. The guidelines shall also offer technical information that states should follow to conduct independent regular audits of insurance companies that participate in the health insurance exchanges. In developing these model guidelines, the Director of OMB and the Secretary of HHS shall consult with executive agencies and offices that have relevant expertise in accounting principles, including, but not limited to, the Department of the Treasury, and with the Government Accountability Office. Upon completion of those model guidelines, the Secretary of HHS should promptly initiate a rulemaking to issue regulations, which will have the force of law, to interpret the Act’s segregation requirements, and shall provide guidance to state health insurance commissioners on how to comply with the model guidelines.

Section 3. Community Health Center Program.

The Act establishes a new Community Health Center (CHC) Fund within HHS, which provides additional Federal funds for the community health center program. Existing law prohibits these centers from using federal funds to provide abortion services (except in cases of rape or incest, or when the life of the woman would be endangered), as a result of both the Hyde Amendment and longstanding regulations containing the Hyde language. Under the Act, the Hyde language shall apply to the authorization and appropriations of funds for Community Health Centers under section 10503 and all other relevant provisions. I hereby direct the Secretary of HHS to ensure that program administrators and recipients of Federal funds are aware of and comply with the limitations on abortion services imposed on CHCs by existing law. Such actions should include, but are not limited to, updating Grant Policy Statements that accompany CHC grants and issuing new interpretive rules.

Section 4. General Provisions. ?(a) Nothing in this Executive Order shall be construed to impair or otherwise affect: (i) authority granted by law or presidential directive to an agency, or the head thereof; or (ii) functions of the Director of the Office of Management and Budget relating to budgetary, administrative, or legislative proposals.?(b) This Executive Order shall be implemented consistent with applicable law and subject to the availability of appropriations.

(c) This Executive Order is not intended to, and does not, create any right or benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity against the United States, its departments, agencies, entities, officers, employees or agents, or any other person.

THE WHITE HOUSE

His switch to support the bill suggests that such an executive order is forthcoming.

Update: Via TPM, CNN is reporting that Stupak is still a no.

Later update: The New York Times is reporting that according to Stupak’s spokeswoman, he’s still a no.

Even later update: Stupak and the White House have reached a deal, Politico reports.

Under the agreement, President Barack Obama would sign an executive order ensuring that no federal funding will go to pay for abortion under the health reform plans. In addition, Stupak will get to state his concerns about abortion funding in the bill during a colloquy on the House floor during the debate.

In return, Stupak and a handful of other anti-abortion Democrats will sign on to the Senate-passed reform bill, Politico said.

Yesterday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) attempted to appease some of the chamber’s most ardent public option supporters, vowing to hold a separate vote on the issue later this year, the Huffington Post reported today. In a letter to Sens. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Reid said he was “very disappointed” that the Democrats didn’t have the votes to keep the provision as part of the reform bills.

“I remain committed to pursuing the public option,” Reid wrote.

While I believe that the legislation we are considering does much to provide affordable coverage to millions of Americans and curb insurance company abuses, I also believe that the public option would provide additional competition to make insurance even more affordable. As we have discussed, I will work to ensure that we are able to vote on the public option in the coming months.

Unmentioned, of course, is the tiny inconvenience that, if Democrats didn’t have the votes to pass the public option by reconciliation (which requires just a simple majority), they certainly won’t have the votes to pass it later in the year, when the filibuster will be back requiring 60 votes to pass anything.

“Congress owes the American people a final vote on health care reform,” Obama said, vowing, “I will do everything in my power to make the case for reform.”

Other highlights:

1) A Call for Reconciliation: Pointing to past legislation that has been enacted using the budget reconciliation approach — including the sweeping Bush tax cuts — Obama argued that health care reform “deserves the same kind of up or down vote.”

2) Rejection of Single Payer Health Care: Supporters of a Medicare-for-all-style system of reform have complained that such a proposal has rarely been mentioned throughout the debate. They can’t make that claim anymore, though neither will they like the attention Obama gave single-payer Wednesday. “In America,” the president said, “it would be neither practical nor realistic.”

3) Comprehensive vs. Piecemeal Reform: Republicans, behind Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), have argued that “Congress doesn’t do comprehensive well.” They’ve been pushing for Democrats to scrap their comprehensive proposal in favor of smaller, more incremental reform steps — a strategy that Obama rejected outright. “The insurance reforms rest on everybody having access to coverage,” he said. “Health reform only works if you take care of all of these problems at once.”

4) Funding: Covering 30+ million uninsured folks will cost money, Obama conceded. But the additional costs — which he estimates to be $100 billion per year — can largely be covered using funds the country already spends on health care (roughly $2.3 trillion annually). “The bottom line is [that] our proposal is paid for,” he said.

5) The Enthusiasm Factor: Liberals have been all over Obama for what many viewed as a tepid approach to health reform in the last year. He let Congress draft the bills, they say, and he hasn’t nearly used the bully pulpit to sell his message that health reform is not just a moral concern but an economic necessity. His actions in recent weeks indicate that he’s ready to get more aggressive. And his promise to do “everything in my power” to pass reform this year is sure to light a fire under at least some moderate Democrats who have been wary that they’ve been left dangling in the wind.

“I do not know how this plays out politically, but I know that it’s right,” Obama concluded. “Let’s get it done.”

Waiting now for the GOP attacks.

This year’s health reform debate has consumed Congress more than any other issue in recent memory. And no figures held more influence in that debate than these ten individuals.

Click here to begin slideshow.

U.S. Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman, I-Conn., whose vote could be crucial to breaking an expected GOP filibuster on health care legislation, Thursday said he would consider voting to move the bill forward, even if he ultimately casts his ballot against the reform package. …

Lieberman said he was “inclined to let the motion to proceed” (or cloture) go forward, but “I haven’t decided yet.”

And with that, Democrats appear to be one step closer to 60 votes.