Health Care News Dec. 20 - 23

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News
THURSDAY
Congress passes revised 9/11 first-responders health benefits bill
A compromise bill to provide free medical treatment and compensation to first responders of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attack won final approval Wednesday from the House and Senate, sending it to President Barack Obama to be signed into law.
Law Prompts Some Health Plans To Cut Mental-Health Benefits
Members of the Screen Actors Guild recently read in their health plan's newsletter that, beginning in January, almost 12,000 of its participants will lose access to treatment for mental-health and substance-abuse issues.
Insurer Rate Hikes Face Fresh Federal Scrutiny
Health insurers that raise premiums 10% or more next year will face new regulatory scrutiny, the Obama administration said Tuesday, in its latest effort to show its health overhaul is helping tame rapidly rising rates.

WEDNESDAY
Medicaid Demands Push States Toward `Cliff' Even as Governors Cut Benefits
Governors nationwide are taking a scalpel to Medicaid, the jointly run state and federal health-care program for 48 million poor Americans, half of whom are children. The single biggest expense for states, Medicaid consumes about 22 percent of their total $1.6 trillion in expenditures.
9/11 First-Responders Bill Goes to the Wire
The House will stay in one more day to consider a bill Wednesday to fund medical care for first responders sickened after the September 11 terrorist attacks.

TUESDAY
Funding Deal Snags Health Law
Democrats last week sought $1 billion to expand federal agencies to cope with health-care demands as part of a proposed $1.1 trillion spending bill. That measure died after Senate Republicans closed ranks against it under pressure from conservative activists.

Economist Comments
WEDNESDAY
Obamacare Reaches Its First Appellate Court
What Congress is attempting to do here is quite literally unprecedented. “The government has never required people to buy any good or service as a condition of lawful residence in the United States.”
Invested in Health Care
Judges presiding over health care lawsuits have stakes in the industry.
Sebelius's Price Controls
States must order more health benefits but also lower rates.
A Double Edged Sword for U.S. Healthcare
The challenge for health systems, industry, and regulators right now is to find a way to overcome existing supply challenges without dampening incentives to innovate, even for older generic products. Creating better market incentives, improving communications between stakeholders, and bolstering the FDA's ability to conduct risk-based inspections are the best ways to prevent the next shortage before it happens.

TUESDAY
The real threat to health care reform
Passing legislation was only one part of the battle for supporters of the health care law. Now comes an equally contentious stage -- the struggle over implementing the law. In many respects, the looming court battles over health care are the least of Obama's problems. The fight over implementation is where real challenge will lie for the program.

Blogs
THURSDAY
We need more supply-side health policy
...in a fierce turf battle rooted in the growing pressures on the medical profession and academia, New York State’s 16 medical schools are attacking their foreign competitors. They have begun an aggressive campaign to persuade the State Board of Regents to make it harder, if not impossible, for foreign schools to use New York hospitals as extensions of their own campuses.

TUESDAY
How Obamacare is Hastening the Day of Reckoning
As bad as government union contracts and pensions are, they are not the real driver of state insolvency. Medicaid is already the second largest item on the average state budget at 21%.
Will Health Care Reform Reduce Medical Bankruptcies?
Excluding the bubble/crash, if the ObamaCare enthusiasts were even mostly correct about medical bankruptcies, overall bankruptcies in Massachusetts should eventually fall pretty significantly from their 2004 levels.
To Reform Health Care and Restore Fiscal Responsibility, Don’t Forget Medicaid
Obamacare did little to solve the issues afflicting current Medicaid beneficiaries or put the program on a fiscally sustainable path. It will actually put Medicaid in worse shape by adding nearly 18 million Americans to this poorly performing program.
Why Did the Feds Need to Do Health Care?
The chances of a Supreme Court ruling overturning one key provision in our new health care law--the mandate--are looking stronger.  Not good, mind you--libertarians I know are saying it's a perhaps 40% chance, while obviously everyone else is considerably more pessimistic.

MONDAY
Obamacare's mandate to buy insurance: Is it an eat-your-broccoli sort of thing?
Federal Judge Roger Vinson adds some color to the debate over the individual mandate in the health-care law. He likens it to Uncle Sam telling everyone to eat their vegetables -- under penalty of law.
Why Is This Tax Different From All Other Taxes?
So why not just give everyone $750 if they buy health insurance?  Well, in fact, you probably could do this.  You might even pay for it with higher income tax rates, though they would not be distributed evenly.  But there are problems with this approach, starting with the fact that well, this isn't what they did.

Reports
THURSDAY
Selected CBO Publications Related to Health Care Legislation, 2009-2010
In the course of the deliberations over health care legislation, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) provided a wide variety of estimates and other analyses regarding the impact of proposals on the federal budget and on aspects of health care and health insurance that were of interest to policymakers. In many cases, those estimates and analyses were produced in collaboration with the staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT). That process began in early 2009 and continued past the enactment of the legislation in March of this year.