Jan 5 2012
Congress starts 2012 facing the same old health policy fights, including the GOP push to pay for a more permanent Medicare "doc fix" with cuts to health law programs or Medicare. Meanwhile, Politico Pro reports on how House Ways and Means Committee Chair Dave Camp, R-Mich., has been pivotal in Republican efforts to undermine the health overhaul law.
National Journal: Congress Returns To Same Old Health Fights, Plus More Work
Both parties agree that physicians shouldn't see their pay reduced, but Republicans want Democrats to offer up cuts to the 2010 health reform law or Medicare to cover the more than $20 billion price tag. That is a politically unacceptable request for most Democrats, making an agreement on where to cut health programs the biggest obstacle for the "doc fix." Conference negotiators have two months to hammer out a deal, but the same issues that hampered negotiations at the end of 2011 are expected to return. The biggest health care task looming over Congress in 2012 is the reauthorization of programs that direct more than $1 billion in fees from the pharmaceutical and medical device industries to the Food and Drug Administration (McCarthy, 1/4).
Politico Pro: How Camp Has Led On Targeted Repeals
House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp was never the guy who shouted the loudest about repealing the health care reform law. But almost two years after President Barack Obama's signature law passed, all of the Republicans' repeal victories that Obama has signed have gone through Camp's committee. His panel wrote the bills to repeal the expanded 1099 tax reporting requirements and the "Medicaid glitch" that would have qualified some middle-class people for Medicaid (Haberkorn, 1/3).
 This article was reprinted from kaiserhealthnews.org with permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent news service, is a program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health care policy research organization unaffiliated with Kaiser Permanente.
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