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Obama's health plan to target insurers' rates

President Obama will propose a regulatory crack down on insurers' rate hikes this morning, as the administration seeks to set the stage for a week-long push to reinvigorate the health care debate, The New York Times reports.

22 Feb 2010

Obama plans to offer own health bill before summit as parties stake claims

President Obama will offer "comprehensive" health reform legislation in advance of next week's planned summit with Republicans, The New York Times reports. "Democratic officials said the president's proposal was being written so that it could be attached to a budget bill as a way of averting a Republican filibuster in the Senate. The procedure, known as budget reconciliation, would let Democrats advance the bill with a simple majority rather than a 60-vote supermajority."

20 Feb 2010

Recession swells Medicaid rolls, shrivels treasuries

Nearly every state is considering or already making cuts to its Medicaid program as the recession swells rolls for the state-run health insurance program for the poor, The New York Times reports. Because of requirements for getting stimulus money to support programs, the states are not allowed to curb enrollment, and are instead cutting optional benefits and reimbursement rates. Lower rates could drive more physicians and other providers away from the program, which already pays very low fees.

19 Feb 2010

Health reform pressure points: Excise tax, individual mandate, antitrust legislation

"An agreement to tax high-cost, employer-sponsored health insurance plans, announced with fanfare by the White House and labor unions last month, is losing support from labor leaders, who say the proposal is too high a price to pay for the limited health care package they expect to emerge from Congress," The New York Times reports.

16 Feb 2010

GOP wary of talks while both sides express low expectations for health care summit

News outlets are focusing on political reaction to President Obama's Feb. 25 bipartisan summit on health care reform.

9 Feb 2010

Obama tries to bridge Democratic divide on health reform

Speaking with Senate Democrats Wednesday, President Obama "suggested that Republicans could be enlisted to play at least some role in negotiating a final bill, The Washington Post reports.

4 Feb 2010

New mental health coverage rules promise to end some discrimination

Reuters: Employer-provided group health plans must offer the same level of coverage for mental illness and drug abuse treatment as for other ailments, according to federal regulations issued on Friday.

31 Jan 2010

Pelosi, Reid search for health reform's forward path

Legislative leaders in search of momentum on health reform "conceded that they did not have an immediate strategy for advancing a health care measure and described their time frame as open-ended," The New York Times reports.

30 Jan 2010

Obama appeals for health reform despite recent setbacks

The New York Times reports that "after spending 2009 emphasizing that a health care overhaul was his top domestic priority, Mr. Obama gave it much less prominence in his [State of the Union] address. He did not mention it until more than half an hour in — a sign of how imperiled the bill has become."

29 Jan 2010

Democrats shun health reform deadlines as they await state of the union

Democrats Tuesday backed away from setting or adhering to a health overhaul timeline "saying they no longer felt pressure to move quickly on a health bill after eight months of setting deadlines and missing them," The New York Times reports.

27 Jan 2010

Democratic leaders still pondering reconciliation pros and cons for health bill

Congressional Democrats are facing a critical decision about whether to use the procedural maneuver known as budget reconciliation to pass a health care reform bill, The New York Times reports.

27 Jan 2010

Searching for consensus, Dems consider potential of paring back health reform

"Passage of a comprehensive [health] bill looked impossible after the Democrats' loss of a Senate seat in Massachusetts. As an alternative, lawmakers in both parties said, some pieces of the bills already passed by the House and the Senate could be pulled out and packaged together in a measure that would command broad support."

23 Jan 2010

Dems plot health reform contingency plans if GOP wins Massachusetts Senate seat

Democrats are considering several courses of action to pass a health care reform bill if Massachusetts Senate hopeful Democrat Martha Coakley loses to Republican Scott Brown in a special election Tuesday, The Wall Street Journal reports.

19 Jan 2010

'Cadillac' tax deal in the works

"Unions tentatively struck a deal Tuesday to exempt collectively bargained healthcare plans from a tax on high-cost plans expected to be used to help raise revenue for the healthcare overhaul," CongressDaily reports.

18 Jan 2010

Unions, Democratic leaders and White House reach agreement on 'Cadillac' health insurance plans

Los Angeles Times: "The White House and labor leaders agreed Thursday on a formula to tax high-cost insurance plans, removing one of the last obstacles to President Obama's healthcare overhaul, officials said." Organized labor had staunchly opposed the proposed "Cadillac" tax, but as part of the agreement, "reached after an intense round of negotiations this week, union leaders dropped their opposition ... in exchange for concessions to limit its scope."

17 Jan 2010

Lawmakers, public grapple with health care endgame

Many Democrats consider their health overhaul increasingly politically dicey now, but "are betting that the only thing worse than passing a bill many of them don't like is not passing one at all," the San Francisco Chronicle reports.

12 Jan 2010

U.S. health spending slows in '08, but federal share soars

A new government report shows that U.S. health spending grew 4.4 percent in 2008 to $2.3 trillion, the slowest annual rate of increase since federal tracking efforts began in 1960, USA Today reports.

6 Jan 2010

Congressional negotiators returning to start conference talks on health reform bill

Democratic lawmakers will begin this week to try to hammer out a compromise between the House and Senate versions of a health care reform bill as they keep an eye on votes for the measures.

4 Jan 2010

TSC proteins regulate Notch activity

Two independent teams of researchers have identified a role for enhanced activation of the signaling protein Notch in tumors characterized by inactivation of either the TSC1 or the TSC2 protein. As indicated by Warren Pear, at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, in an accompanying commentary, these data provide a rationale for testing whether Notch inhibitors are of benefit to those with TSC-associated tumors.

29 Dec 2009

Sen. Byrd casts vote for 'my friend' Ted Kennedy

In the Senate vote on health care Thursday, long-serving Democrat, Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., cast his "aye" vote "for my friend Ted Kennedy," the late senator from Massachusetts, according to The New York Times (Pear, 12/24).

27 Dec 2009