White House continues to push health care policies, sidestepping Congress

Using executive branch powers, the Obama administration has laid out new steps to cut fraud in Medicare and Medicaid, and announced that $1 billion of federal funding will go toward innovation programs designed to boost jobs and improve patient care. The president also offered comment on the super committee's progress.  

The Associated Press: Another White House Executive Move: Cutting Waste
Pounding away with executive actions, the White House is laying out new steps to cut fraud in Medicare and Medicaid, keeping up its campaign of acting without Congress ... The White House is launching pilot programs intended to further cut waste and fraud in the giant Medicare and Medicaid entitlement programs. The Health and Human Services Department will oversee the changes, such as testing changes to outdated hospital billing systems to prevent overbilling, administration officials said ahead of a formal announcement (Feller, 11/15).

Reuters: Obama Administration Launches $1 Billion Healthcare Drive
The Obama administration on Monday said $1 billion of federal funds allocated in last year's health reform law will go toward innovation programs designed to boost jobs and improve patient care. The announcement is the administration's latest attempt to show that it is working outside of a deeply divided Congress to create jobs (Bull and Yukhananov, 11/14).

The Hill: HHS Makes Available $1 Billion For Innovative Health Care Hiring
The Health Care Innovation Challenge, funded by the federal healthcare reform law, aims to test "creative ways to deliver high-quality healthcare services and lower costs" to people in government healthcare programs, according to an HHS fact sheet. Priority will be given to sustainable projects that can get off the ground within six months and rapidly hire, train and deploy "new types" of healthcare workers (Pecquet, 11/14).

National Journal: White House Announces $1 Billion In Health Care Grants
The goal is to experiment with ways to expand the health care work force while reducing the overall cost of services-;and to get around Congress ... But critics and supporters alike suggested the impact of the Health Care Innovation Challenge would likely be limited (Quinton, 11/14).

CNN: Government Offers Grants For Health Care Savings
According to the [HHS] statement, the program will award grants in March 2012 to applicants "who will implement the most compelling new ideas to deliver better health, improved care and lower costs to people enrolled in Medicare, Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program, particularly those with the highest health care needs" (11/14).

The New York Times: Far From Washington, Obama Defends His Policies
Mr. Obama also called for Republicans on the special Congressional committee seeking $1.2 trillion in deficit reductions over 10 years to drop their opposition to raising some revenues from the wealthy ... "If you want a balanced approach that doesn't gut Medicare and Medicaid, doesn't prevent us from making investments in education and basic science and research," he said, "then prudent cuts have to be matched up with revenue" (Calmes, 11/14).