January, 2010

Scientists have paid little attention to the hours humans spend sitting. They're finding that "like a Ferrari, the human is meant ...

Democrats trying to salvage their health care legislation have been talking a lot about "reconciliation." It's basically a way to alter laws without the threat of a Senate filibuster. But reconciliation wasn't designed as a vehicle for controversial policy change, and it's no silver bullet. Host Guy Raz gets a reconciliation primer from Sarah Binder, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

House Education and Labor Committee Chairman George Miller says Congress will pass health overhaul legislation this year even though Democratic leaders are increasingly focusing on the economy and jobs.

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President Obama needs to be mighty inspirational tonight if he wants to get a health care overhaul bill passed. We have some suggestions from famous movie speeches.

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The authors state that the current US health care system is essentially a cottage industry of nonintegrated, dedicated artisans who eschew standardization. Services are often highly variable, performance is largely unmeasured, care is customized to individual patients, and standardized processes are regarded skeptically. Growing evidence, however, highlights the dangers of continuing to operate in cottage-industry mode.

Scrambling for a plan if Republicans win in Massachusetts, Democrats are mulling several options to save the Senate version of the health care legislation.

Pelosi says health care bill will pass, regardless of Massachusetts Senate race's outcome.

Democrats and Republicans ramp up election eve get-out-the-vote efforts in the battle for Mass. Senate seat that could decide the fate of Obama's health care overhaul
• Obama in Mass.: 'Understand What's at Stake Here'
• GOP's Brown Riding Voter Anger in Kennedy Seat Bid

A major component of the health bills grinding through Congress right now is a new requirement that nearly everyone buy health insurance — a so-called individual mandate. But conservatives who oppose the health care overhaul have threatened to challenge this mandate on constitutional grounds.

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White House looks at persuading House Dems to accept Senate bill passed last month, despite objections to it
• Obama Says Health Care Not About Dems

The American health care system is afflicted with Baumol's cost disease, and its namesake, economist William J. Baumol, suggests that Democrats should be careful about setting expectations for their emerging legislation.

A panicky White House and Democratic allies scrambled Sunday for a plan to salvage their hard-fought health care package in case a Republican wins Tuesday's Senate race in Massachusetts, which would enable the GOP to block further Senate action.

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Democrats scrambled over the weekend to stave off defeat in a closer-than-expected Massachusetts Senate race that has raised ...

The final decision on who should supervise health exchanges is critical to health plan choices available to consumers, the cost of the premiums and the clout regulators may have.

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Former national health IT coordinator Dr. David Brailer is "pretty impressed" with the HHS' proposed criteria for meaningful use of EMRs published Dec. 30. According to Brailer, who now runs an investment fund in San Francisco, the proposal is an outgrowth of much of the work he did as the first head of the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology from 2004 to 2006. "The meaningful use criteria are highly consistent with what we did," Brailer said.

The Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC) would like to see hospitals receive a payment update from Congress equivalent to the market basket index's rate of change for inpatient and outpatient payments in the 2011 fiscal year, and voted for such at its January meeting this week. 

A handful of thorny issues remains to be resolved in health overhaul negotiations. How cash-strapped states will cope with the costs of a large Medicaid expansion proposed in the legislation looms large.

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Health insurer Highmark and two Pennsylvania-based hospitals are in talks to change the way those hospitals are reimbursed, possibly to a flat rate for groups of people. Dr. Kenneth Melani, Highmark's president and CEO, hopes the new payment method--which could mean anything from offering care to patients with chronic health problems to bundling payments for medical care for "a much larger group"--will make for better quality care that's more affordable.

Leaders of organized labor say they'll go along with a plan to tax so-called "Cadillac" health care policies after winning concessions designed to shield middle-class families. Many Democrats in Congress are eager to put the health care fight behind them and go to work on the issue that's uppermost in voters' minds: jobs.

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Democrats agreed to changes in a planned tax for high-end health plans to win over unions. The proposed changes would cut estimated savings from the so-called Cadillac tax to about $90 billion from $150 billion over a decade.

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