President Barack Obama said on Friday he expected a tough vote this weekend, but Democrats were poised to make history when the House of Representatives votes on his healthcare overhaul bill.

"Right now we are at the point where we are going to do something historic this weekend," Obama told a raucous audience at George Mason University, as Democratic congressional leaders scrambled to round up support for the plan to revamp the $2.5 trillion medical industry.

"If this vote fails, the insurance industry will continue to run amok. They will continue to deny people coverage. They will continue to deny people care. They will continue to jack up premiums 40 percent or 50 percent or 60 percent as they have in the last few weeks," he told the rally.

"That's why they're pouring millions of dollars into negative ads. That's why they're doing everything they can to kill this bill," Obama said in a fiery speech.

"The time for reform is now," he said.

After more than a year of intense debate, the House is expected to vote on Sunday on the sweeping healthcare overhaul, intended to extend insurance coverage to 32 million uninsured Americans.

The bill has faced solid Republican opposition, and Obama and his fellow Democrats were struggling to ensure enough votes from Democrats, who hold a majority of seats in both houses of Congress, to ensure its passage.

President Barack Obama said on Thursday a report on his proposed legislation to overhaul the healthcare system showed it would reduce the nation's budget deficit over the long term.

House Democrats are pushing to the brink of passage a landmark, $940 billion health care overhaul bill that would simultaneously deliver on President Barack Obama's promise to expand coverage while slashing the deficit, a strategy aimed at attracting support from the party's fiscal conservatives.

The 10-year plan would provide coverage to more than 30 million people now uninsured through a combination of tax credits for middle class households and an expansion of the Medicaid program for low income people. Release of the legislation later Thursday sets the stage for a House vote on Sunday.

It would restructure one-sixth of the U.S. economy in the biggest expansion of the social safety net since Medicare was created in 1965. It would also impose new obligations on individuals and businesses, requiring for the first time that most Americans carry health insurance and penalizing medium-sized and large companies that don't provide coverage for their workers.

Hospitals and doctors, drug companies and insurers would gain millions of new paying customers, but they would also have to adjust to major changes. Medicare cuts would force hospitals to operate more efficiently or risk going out of business. Insurance companies would face unprecendented federal regulation. Health care industries would be hit with new federal taxes. Upper-income households would face a new tax on investment earnings.

A Scottish man is facing charges after the Philadelphia-to-London flight he was on made an unscheduled stop in Boston because he was allegedly being belligerent and disruptive.

A spokesman for Logan International Airport says John Alexander Murray of Glasgow was arrested shortly after US Airways Flight 728 landed at around 11 p.m. Monday. The plane departed for London two hours later.

Prosecutors say the 50-year-old Murray was blocking the aisle with his arm, which was in a splint. They say he would not move his arm, despite several requests from the crew, and demanded to be taken back to Philadelphia.

He is scheduled to be arraigned Tuesday in East Boston District Court on a charge of interfering with a flight crew.

A look at key issues in the health care debate:

THE ISSUE: Why do medical costs increase at a rate faster than inflation?

THE POLITICS: Health care spending over the past year increased by 3.2 percent even as overall consumer prices dropped 2.1 percent. That's not unusual in the United States, where health care spending rises at rates substantially higher than inflation. Analysts agree on any number of reasons for the increases, but tend to disagree on which cause is most responsible. Among the reasons:

_Americans get too much unnecessary care — too many tests, treatments and hospitalizations that do not improve their health. The reasons for this vary: Many doctors have a financial interest in new technology, doctors and hospitals fear malpractice lawsuits and patients are indiscriminate consumers because they are shielded from health care costs through insurance or government health plans.

_Easy access to expensive new medical technologies.

_Inefficient health insurance companies with high administrative costs that don't have anything to do with actual health care.

_Unhealthy living habits that strain the system, including smoking and obesity.

WHAT IT MEANS: Curbing the rising costs of health care is at the heart of the current debate on overhauling the nation's health care system. Rising costs have placed Medicare, the federal government insurance program for the elderly, on an unsustainable trajectory that would be responsible for exploding government deficits. At the same time, employers and their workers have met with rising health insurance costs that are straining business and family budgets.

President Barack Obama will tell the nation in a prime-time address precisely how he wants to expand health care, pitching a fresh argument — but, to liberal disappointment, no demand — for a government-run insurance option.

"The president's going to speak clearly and directly to the American people about what's in this bill for them," press secretary Robert Gibbs said Wednesday, hours before Obama appeared before a rare joint session of Congress and a live national television audience.

Opening a final push for his top domestic priority, Obama will push for a health care overhaul that provides new and crucial protections for people who already have insurance, affordable access to coverage to those without, and reduced spending for families, businesses and government.

"We do intend to get something done this year," Obama said on ABC's "Good Morning America."

Even as the president prepared to speak — and continued Wednesday to write and hone the approximately 35-minute address himself — the leader of the influential Senate Finance Committee raced to broker an overhaul proposal with both Democratic and Republican input.

And Republicans pressed their case that Obama's sweeping approach won't wash.

"The status quo is unacceptable. But if August showed us anything, it's that so are the alternatives that the administration and Democrats in Congress have proposed," said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky in prepared remarks. "That means sensible, step-by-step reforms, not more trillion-dollar grand schemes."

Discussing Obama's thinking on what is sure to be one of the most closely watched portions of the address, a senior administration official said the president will make a case for why he still believes a public insurance plan is the best way to introduce greater competition into the system.

A former hospital executive admitted Friday he paid a man to recruit homeless people for unnecessary medical treatment in a scheme to bilk government health programs out of millions of dollars.

Dr. Rudra Sabaratnam, who ran City of Angels Medical Center, faces up to 10 years in federal prison after pleading guilty to paying a recruiter nearly $500,000 to find Skid Row homeless people with Medi-Cal or Medicare cards and transport them to the hospital.

In his plea agreement, which remains under seal, Sabaratnam also agreed to pay more than $4.1 million in restitution to Medicare and Medi-Cal.

Sabaratnam, 64, is scheduled to be sentenced June 8 on two counts of illegal patient referrals.

Messages left with City of Angels and Sabaratnam's attorney were not immediately returned Friday.

U.S. Attorney Thomas P. O'Brien said the doctor masterminded a sophisticated scheme to cheat the government out of millions of dollars from about August 2004 to October 2007.

The investigation was sparked in 2006 as Los Angeles police looked into reports that hospitals were dumping homeless patients on Skid Row streets.

A $40 medical bill might seem small but a West Virginia man says his five-year battle over paying it was a matter of principle.

Sam Juniper says his health benefits weren't supposed to change after he retired in 2000 from M&G Polymers.

But he received a $40 bill in 2002 after the company's new provider, Aetna Insurance, refused to cover the cost of some blood work.

He challenged that in Mason County court in 2003 and won every decision all the way to the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va. The appeals court ruled in his favor on Oct. 10.

Lawyer Mark Underwood handled Juniper's case for free and says small bills like this add up over time.

Juniper says he is still waiting for his $40 refund check, which he plans to frame and hang on his wall.