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The big health reform issues bedeviling Harry Reid

Kaiser Health News staff writer Mary Agnes Carey reports on the outlook in the Senate during its weekend session and Majority Leader Harry Reid's continuing efforts to advance the cause.

8 Dec 2009

Today's opinions and editorials

[I]t's virtually impossible to design a reform scheme that doesn't, in the early stages, involve at least some transfer of money away from the healthy and wealthy. The point of insurance is to pool risk, bringing in contributions from relatively healthy people, so that medical bills don't fall too heavily on the sick (Jonathan Cohn, 12/7).

7 Dec 2009

Gawande: A 'hodgepodge' of pilot programs may be the right approach to cut health costs

Legislation to overhaul the American health system lacks an overarching plan to curb the rising costs of medicine, according to Atul Gawande, the influential surgeon and writer, in an essay for the Dec. 14 issue of The New Yorker. "Does the bill end medicine's destructive piecemeal payment system? Does it replace paying for quantity with paying for quality? Does it institute nationwide structural changes that curb costs and raise quality? It does not," Gawande writes. "Instead, what it offers is . . . pilot programs."

7 Dec 2009

Deals on health reform in jeopardy as support from drugmakers, senior groups is tested

The pharmaceutical industry's support for a health care reform bill in the Senate is in jeopardy as Senate Democrats ponder squeezing more cost savings out of drug makers to help pay for the overhaul, The Associated Press reports.

7 Dec 2009

First Edition: December 7, 2009

President Obama took to the Hill this weekend to boost Senate Democrats' health reform efforts. Meanwhile, the negotiations on flashpoint issues such as the public option continue.

7 Dec 2009

Combative health debate continues: Senate considers insurance executives' pay, cost controls

News coverage is focusing on Senate consideration of amendments to the massive health reform bill.

6 Dec 2009

Perspective opinion piece addressing health care reform published

The New England Journal of Medicine today published a Perspective opinion piece addressing health care reform, co-authored by Irwin Redlener, M.D., president, Children's Health Fund and Director, National Center for Disaster Preparedness and Professor of Clinical Population & Family Health at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health; and, Roy Grant, M.A., of the Children's Health Fund, a national organization that advocates for and develops primary care programs for disadvantaged and medically underserved children.

5 Dec 2009

ACP pleased with affordable coverage for all Americans, expresses concern regarding several provisions

The American College of Physicians (ACP) today sent a letter to Senate leaders sharing the College's views on key issues in H.R. 3590, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

5 Dec 2009

Health experts available to speak about health care reform

Garson helped originate and draft the "Health Partnership Act" (S. 325 and H.R. 5606), which funds grants to states for innovations to improve coverage for the uninsured, quality and efficiency.

5 Dec 2009

Congress will not let the full SGR cuts take effect

Despite claims that the pending health reform bills aren't really paid for because Congress never lets Medicare savings take effect, Congress has allowed the vast majority of Medicare cuts that it enacted in the past two decades to take effect and produce significant savings, a new study from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities shows.

5 Dec 2009

Senators offer cost-constainment amendment; Senate continues to discuss abortion, public option

The Associated Press: "Sens. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., and Susan Collins, R-Maine, along with Sen. Arlen Specter, D-Pa., unveiled a package of amendments Friday that would reward Medicare patients for picking efficient doctors, require insurance companies to make public more information about claims denials and speed up programs shifting from paying providers for services to paying them for performance

4 Dec 2009

Health Policy Research Roundup

UCLA Center For Health Policy Research: Health Disparities Among California's Nearly Four Million Low-Income Nonelderly Adult Women - Using data from the 2007 California Health Interview Survey, the authors of this policy brief compare low-income women, ages 18-64, to others. The report finds the low-income women are four times more likely to report fair or poor health and are more likely to report a health condition that interferes with basic physical activities, such as walking or climbing stairs.

4 Dec 2009

Today's opinions and editorials

In short, if the changes that are proposed for employer subsidies in the current Medicare Part D program are enacted, everyone will lose (Tom Scully, 12/3).

4 Dec 2009

Senate's efforts on health care being slowed by other issues

The Wall Street Journal: "The Senate's slow-moving health bill is colliding with other legislative priorities on the economy, raising chances that Democrats won't meet their goal of pushing a health-care overhaul through the chamber this month." Though some forward progress was evidenced on Thursday when the chamber, for the first time since floor consideration of the health bill began, voted on amendments.

4 Dec 2009

Fact checking lawmakers' claims about health bills

NPR began a series called "Is That So?": "As the debate about the health overhaul bill goes on (and on and on) you might find that sometimes what one Senator says seems to be the exact opposite of the next." In the first installment, NPR's Julie Rovner examined Sen. Christopher Dodd's statement: "On the day this bill is enacted, health insurance becomes a buyer's market, not a seller's market. And that's as American as apple pie," and found that "it may be so eventually, but definitely not on the day the bill is enacted."

4 Dec 2009