The new health reform law will have little influence over voters' choices when they hit the polls in November, according to new survey results released Thursday.

Forty-one percent of respondents said a lawmaker's vote on the reform law would "not make much difference" in choosing a candidate, according to the CBS News/New York Times survey. 

Furthermore, the percentage of voters (28 percent) saying they're "more likely" to choose a member who supported the reforms is precisely the same as those who said they'd be "less likely" to pick that candidate — a wash suggesting a certain futility in both party's efforts to use the law to their advantage in November's midterms.

Among other key findings: 

• Just 3 percent of respondents said healthcare is the most pressing problem facing the country.

• Of those who said they're "angry" with Washington, 7 percent indicated that healthcare reform is the leading cause — down from 14 percent in April, just after the law was enacted.

• 37 percent of voters said they approve of the new healthcare law, while 49 percent said they disapprove.

The survey was conducted between Sept. 10 and 14. 

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus on Thursday said the "egregious" practices of insurers are largely to blame for the rising number of uninsured Americans, as newly reported by the U.S. Census Bureau.

The Montana Democrat also suggested the new healthcare reform law will reverse the trend.

"The increase in uninsured Americans last year is clear evidence of how critical it was to take action to protect patients," Baucus said in a statement, "and that’s exactly what the Affordable Care Act will do."

Earlier in the day, the Census Bureau reported that nearly 51 million Americans, or 16.7 percent of the population, lacked health insurance last year, up from 46.3 million (15.4 percent) in 2008.

Baucus, a chief author of the law, said the pre-reform trend is largely the result of "egregious insurance company abuses" — practices the new law will rein in, he adds.

The law, for instance, will prohibit insurers from denying coverage for pre-existing conditions or capping coverage at arbitrary spending amounts, he noted.

"And, because of the Affordable Care Act," Baucus adds, "insurance companies can no longer drop coverage when folks get sick, just because of unintentional errors on applications years earlier."

The Census suggested another cause of the spike in the uninsured rate: The number of people covered under employer-based plans plummeted by 6.3 million between 2008 and 2009 — largely a testimony to an unemployment rate that topped 10 percent last year.

Republicans are confident about winning several House races in New York this cycle, and Rep. John Hall's (D) is one of them.

Hall faces Republican Nan Hayworth, who's running on the GOP, Conservative and Independence lines. In addition to facing united conservative opposition, Hall is also being hit in a TV ad by Revere America, the group founded by former Gov. George Pataki (R) to campaign against the Democrats' healthcare bill.

The ad warns that "government-run healthcare" will lead to "longer waits in doctors' offices," among other things.

"Those who voted for the bloated healthcare bill will now feel the heat for supporting a bill the American people didn’t want," Pataki said in a statement.

Some Democratic activists have grumbled that their side isn't putting significant resources behind positive healthcare messaging. Meanwhile, support for the party's landmark legislation is eroding.

Support for healthcare reform fell seven points in August to 43 percent, while 45 percent of the public have unfavorable views of the bill, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation tracking poll for August.

House Democrats are asking the head of Johnson & Johnson to testify later this month over the April recall of 135 million bottles of infant and children's medicine.

The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, headed by Rep. Edolphus Towns (D-N.Y.), also wants J&J CEO William Weldon to respond to new information gathered during the panel's ongoing investigation into charges the company hired private contractors in 2008 to go store to store and buy up defective Motrin tablets — an episode Towns has dubbed the "phantom recall."

Towns on Thursday released e-mails from one of those contractors — San Diego-based WIS International — suggesting the company planned to extend the phantom recall to other defective products.

"[W]e are exploring another similar but potentially larger recall for July involving Children's Tylenol," a WIS executive wrote in June 2009. The effort, the executive continued, "would make our Motrin project look small."

J&J launched an enormous recall of a number of its products, including Motrin and Children's Tylenol, in April of this year.

That timeline, combined with the new e-mails, raises two important questions, Towns says.

"First, was Johnson & Johnson considering conducting a phantom recall of children's medicine?" Towns wrote Thursday in a letter to Weldon. And second: "Was Johnson & Johnson aware of problems with Children's Tylenol and other children's medicines months before it actually recalled these products?"

The hearing is scheduled for Sept. 30.

The federal district judge overseeing a multi-state challenge to the healthcare reform law has unveiled a detailed schedule for the suit's next steps. The hearing and oral argument on the motion for summary judgment will be held Dec. 16.

Florida Northern District Senior Judge Roger Vinson's amended final scheduling order, signed Wednesday, states that the judge will enter his written order on the motion to dismiss on or before Oct. 14.

"Assuming the case survives dismissal in whole or in part," he writes, "the parties have until 11/4/2010 in which to move for summary judgment (and the (defendants) may file their answer at the same time); the opposing party will have until 11/23/2010 to respond; and the moving party will have until 12/6/2010 to file any Reply."

In a separate, bizarre development, right-wing talk-radio host Rush Limbaugh claimed on his show this week that Vinson was an avid hunter and amateur taxidermist who had shot three bears and mounted their heads over the defendants' entryway into his courtroom. 

"This," Limbaugh told his listeners, "would not be good news" for the law's supporters.

The information was apparently part of a hoax entry in Wikipedia; Vinson corrected the record in a New York Times article: He's the president of the American Camellia Society, and the only creature he's ever shot is a water moccasin.

The Energy and Commerce Health subpanel on Thursday referred 16 public health bills to the full committee with recommendation for passage during markup next week.

All but one, requiring the Department of Health and Human Services to set up voluntary data collection on the sexual orientation and gender identity of people who apply for HHS services or respond to its surveys, garnered unanimous bipartisan support. The measure's author, Rep. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.), said lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) Americans are ill-served by a "lack of cultural competency" among federal officials that leaves the U.S. with "gaping holes in our knowledge on LGBT health."

Baldwin is one of only three openly gay members of Congress.

Republicans on the panel all voted against the bill, which cleared markup on a 12-10 party-line vote. 

The findings mark the first decrease in the number of insured Americans since the Census Bureau began keeping those figures in 1987.

A top Senate Democrat vowed Congress will intervene if courts roll back the Obama administration's expansion of embryonic stem cell research.

Children's cancer advocates pressed lawmakers to pass several pieces of legislation during a Congressional Childhood Cancer Summit Thursday.

The legislation includes:

• Reauthorization of the Best Pharmaceuticals for Children Act and the Pediatric Research Equity Act, which would allow for the creation of incentives for manufacturers to develop drugs to treat children's cancer. Although 12,500 children are diagnosed with cancer every year, that's only 1 percent of the national total, making pediatric drug research largely unprofitable;

• The Create Hope Act, which would provide incentives for biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies to develop drugs for pediatric cancers and other pediatric rare diseases through a priority review voucher program. The bill was introduced by Sens. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) and Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio); and

• The Childhood Cancer Survivorship Research and Quality of Life Act, which proposes new research on how to improve follow-up care and create systemic interventions to improve children's quality of life. The bill was introduced by Reps. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.) and Mary Bono Mack (R-Calif.)

Thursday's summit was convened by Reps. Michael McCaul (R-Texas) and Joe Sestak (D-Pa.), co-chairs of the Congressional Pediatric Cancer Caucus.