WASHINGTON—Failure is not an option on health care, a leading Democratic senator said yesterday, even as Republicans turned up the heat on moderates who hold the fate of the legislation in their hands. “We’re not going to not pass a bill,“ said Sen. Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y. With or without Republican support, Democrats will get it done, Schumer said, because a health-care system that leaves nearly 50 million people uninsured and spends more than any other clearly is broken.

On Saturday, the day the U.S. Senate voted to move health-care legislation to the floor, Sen. Jim Webb’s office received 1,200 calls at the front desk. That’s compared with an average of 1,000 phone calls per week. The story was similar in Sen. Mark R. Warner’s office, as Virginians anxious about a sweeping health-care overhaul have been lighting up the switchboards to voice their opinions.

A leading Senate Democrat said Monday his party is determined to push through a health care overhaul bill with or without Republican support because the “system is broken.“

Senate Democrats on Sunday sparred with each other over how to fix the nation’s troubled health care system, the moderates threatening to scuttle legislation if their demands weren’t met and the more liberal members warning their party leaders not to bend.

On Tuesday night, the newspaper held its 27th Public Square. The topic was health care reform. Unlike our September Public Square on health care this session was devoted entirely to comments from the public.

Sweeping health care legislation has cleared its first hurdle in the Senate on a party-line vote. The 60-39 vote clears the way for a historic debate after Thanksgiving on the legislation.

Both of Virginia’s U.S. senators say they will vote to allow debate on the Senate version of health-care overhaul legislation, but neither has committed to voting for the actual bill. Sen. Mark R. Warner, D-Va., got an earful on the subject from a group of small-business owners in Carytown yesterday while protesters rallied outside Warner and Sen. Jim Webb’s Richmond offices.

More than 100 people gathered outside the downtown Richmond offices of Sens. Jim Webb and Mark R. Warner today to protest the proposed health care plans pending before Congress. Neither Virginia Senator, both Democrats, has committed to vote in favor of the plan that was unveiled this week in the Senate. Richmond police officers stood by to make sure the protests were peaceful. Protesters held signs and shouted slogans.

Sen. Mark Warner said he wants to see more cost containment in the Senate’s health care bill before he can support it. The Senate version is better than the bill narrowly passed out of the House of Representatives on that grounds, he said. “I think it’s gotten better but it’s still got a ways to go before I get to yes,“ he told a group of small business owners gathered this morning at Can Can in Carytown.

Workers afraid of layoffs didn’t rush to doctors’ offices this year to use their health-insurance benefits as some had predicted, according to a survey of employer-sponsored health plans. “It just didn’t happen. People might have been more concerned about getting to work every day,“ said Kenneth Jeffries of the Richmond office of Mercer, an international human resources and benefits management, consulting, outsourcing and investment services company.

An Associated Press poll says most Americans want Congress to deal with malpractice lawsuits driving up the cost of medical care.

The cost of retiree health care is turning into a hot-button issue for state legislators and local officials, who will learn today how much more local governments will have to pay for employee retirement plans. The increase that will be recommended to the Virginia Retirement System Board of Trustees by its actuary is small—about 1 percent overall on average among all localities covered by the state system.

Virginia and its localities should stop building more prisons and jails because a decade-long building program has led to undercrowding, a state budget analyst said yesterday. “There is no need to approve any additional prison or jail construction for the foreseeable future,“ Paul Van Lenten Jr. told members of the House Appropriations Committee and House Finance Committee.

Durwood Usry is a small-business owner with a complicated health history and a big monthly insurance bill. “My health policy costs more than my mortgage, but it’s the first thing that gets paid at the first of every month,“ said Usry, a Henrico County resident who pays more than $1,500 to insure himself and his wife.

It’s hard to recall an issue that has sparked as much heated debate as the current effort to reform the American health care system. Emotion has ruled much of the discussion. That’s no surprise. We are, after all, talking about making enormous changes to a system that not only accounts for one-sixth of the U.S economy, but also deals daily with matters of life and death. Both sides have too frequently resorted to exaggeration, misinformation, and wishful thinking.