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preme Court is reviewing isn't the first federal mandate involving health care.
• There's a Medicare payroll tax on workers and employers, for example, and a requirement that hospitals provide free emergency services to indigents. Health care is full of government dictates, some arguably more intrusive than President Barack Obama's overhaul law.
• It's a wrinkle that has caught the attention of the justices.
• Most of the mandates apply to providers such as hospitals and insurers. For example, a 1990s law requires health plans to cover at least a 48-hour hospital stay for new mothers and their babies. Such requirements protect some consumers while indirectly raising costs for others.
• One mandate affects just about everybody: Workers must pay a tax to finance Medicare, which collects about $200 billion a year.
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• YANGON, Myanmar (AP) -- Democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi was poised to win her first elected office in a landmark election Sunday in Myanmar that drew crowds of voters determined to send the country's most famous ex-political prisoner to parliament.
• A victory for Suu Kyi would mark a new era in her 24-year political career, which was spent mostly under house arrest, and for Myanmar as the government seeks legitimacy and a lifting of Western sanctions while emerging from a half-century of oppressive and hermetic military rule.
• Sunday's by-election was called to fill just 45 vacant seats in Myanmar's 664-seat national Parliament and will not change the balance of power in a new government that is nominally civilian but still heavily controlled by retired generals. Suu Kyi and other opposition candidates would have almost no say even if they win all the seats they are contesting.
• But Suu Kyi's candidacy has resurrected hope among Myanmar's downtrodden masses. If the 66-year-old Nobel peace laureate takes office as expected it would symbolize a giant leap toward national reconciliation.
• "She may not be able to do anything at this stage," said one voter, Go Khehtay, who cast his ballot for Suu Kyi at Wah Thin Kha, one of the dirt-poor villages in the rural constituency south of Yangon that she is vying to represent.
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