Rep. Camp wants explanation about rising cost of health law

The Associated Press: Soaring Cost Estimate Prompts Health Law Doubts
Cost estimates for a key portion of President Barack Obama's health care overhaul law have ballooned by $111 billion from last year's budget, and a senior Republican lawmaker on Friday demanded an explanation. House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp, R-Mich., wants to know by Monday why the estimated cost of helping millions of middle-class Americans buy health insurance has jumped by about 30 percent for an eight-year period, from 2014-2021 (Alonzo-Zaldivar, 3/2).

The Washington Post: High Health-Care Costs: It's All In The Pricing
There is a simple reason health care in the United States costs more than it does anywhere else: The prices are higher. That may sound obvious. But it is, in fact, key to understanding one of the most pressing problems facing our economy. ... Prices don't explain all of the difference between America and other countries. But they do explain a big chunk of it. The question, of course, is why Americans pay such high prices -; and why we
haven't done anything about it (Klein, 3/2).

Meanwhile, some members of Congress are working on proposals to cut entitlements.

The Hill: Lawmakers Secretly Working On Bipartisan Deficit Grand-Bargain
A small, bipartisan group of lawmakers in both the House and Senate are secretly drafting deficit grand bargain legislation that cuts entitlements and raises new revenue. ... The core House group of roughly 10 negotiators is derived from a larger Gang of 100 lawmakers led by Reps. Mike Simpson (R-Idaho) and Health Shuler (D-N.C.), who urged the debt supercommittee to strike a grand bargain last year. ... After the election, Congress will face deadline pressures to raise the debt ceiling, deal with expiring Bush-era tax rates and address automatic cuts triggered by the supercommittee's failure. The conventional wisdom is that any politically painful choices like cutting Medicare or raising taxes has to wait until then. "We can't give up for a year on trying to address this problem. I think we have to do something," Simpson said (Wasson, 3/4).