US President Donald Trump has warned that the nation's health care system is in danger of imploding and said Congress must make fundamental changes to the sweeping health law passed by his predecessor.

A key component of Barack Obama’s landmark health care overhaul has begun despite the federal government shutdown sparked by Republicans trying to derail the law designed to extend insurance coverage to millions of Americans.

Congressional leaders showed no signs of giving ground to resolve the next step in America’s financial crisis, with Democrats still talking about higher taxes on the wealthy and the Senate’s top Republican suggesting a crippling default on US loans was possible unless there were significant cuts in government spending.

President Barack Obama’s re-election erased the last major threat to his signature healthcare reform law, but left questions about implementation as the focus shifts to tackling the mounting US deficit.

The US Supreme Court today upheld the heart of President Barack Obama’s health care reforms, handing him a huge election-year political victory.

Barack Obama is expected to seek a new base tax rate for the wealthy to ensure that millionaires pay at least at the same percentage as middle-income taxpayers.

US President Barack Obama said Republican and Democratic leaders in the House and Senate have reached an agreement with him to raise the government’s debt ceiling and avoid a default.

The Republican-controlled US House of Representatives has adopted a dramatic 2012 budget plan that would cut the country’s debt by revamping the decades-old system that guarantees medical insurance for Americans over 65 and to the poor and disabled.

A building worker badly disfigured in an accident has received the United States’ first full face transplant.

The Democratic-controlled US Congress has approved historic legislation extending healthcare to tens of millions of Americans who lack it and cracking down on insurance company abuses.

ABBOTT LABORATORIES said it was subpoenaed last month by the US Justice Department in connection with the sales and marketing of bile-duct stents.

Wal-Mart plans to appeal against a $172m (€144m) judgment awarded to thousands of employees who claimed they were illegally denied lunch breaks.

NEARLY 1.2 million Floridians were urged to leave their homes yesterday as massive and powerful Hurricane Frances roared toward the crowded south-east US coast.

A WOMAN was forced to spend four months with almost half her skull stored in a hospital freezer due to insurance problems.