Health Care News Feb. 7 - 11

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News
FRIDAY
Medicare Chief Dodges Republican Health Law Questions in House Testimony
Dr. Donald Berwick, the man in charge of Medicare and at the heart of implementing President Obama’s health care law, faced a barrage of questions from House Republicans over concerns about the plan and on his own controversial past positions.
Hutchison Introduces Bill to Repeal Spending-Account Restrictions
The senator introduced a bill today that would repeal the new regulations to the spending accounts. Beginning in January, a provision of the health care law took effect prohibiting spending accounts to be used to purchase over-the-counter medication without a prescription. By 2013, the accounts will be capped at $2,500 annually.

THURSDAY
Virginia seeks quick review of health care reform challenge
Virginia officials have asked the Supreme Court for an expedited review of the sweeping health care reform law, saying the issue is too important to delay consideration of the legislation's constitutionality.
Medical-Liability Bill Caught in Legislative Slog
House Republicans held their first markup of health legislation this morning, as the Judiciary Committee took up a bill to establish new federal regulations on medical-liability cases. The bill would establish caps on noneconomic damages from medical liability cases at $250,000.
Should Supreme Court Justices Clarence Thomas, Elena Kagan Sit Out Health Care Case?
Seventy-Four Democrats Say Justice Thomas Should Recuse Himself Because of Wife's Lobbying.
HHS Proposes Rule to Extend Health Law to Student Health
Under the proposed rule, the 4.5 million students enrolled in student health plans would have access to free preventive care. Benefits of no lifetime limits, no rescissions, and no exclusion on preexisting conditions would also be extended to students.

WEDNESDAY
House seen blocking healthcare funds
The U.S. House of Representatives is likely to vote to block funding for President Barack Obama's signature healthcare overhaul when it takes up a budget plan next week, House Republican Leader Eric Cantor said on Tuesday.
Republicans Plan to Choke Off Funding for Health Care Law
In other words, Congress has to approve a new bill to pay for government operations past March 4. Some House Republicans are eyeing this legislation as a way to strip the health care law of any dollars, thus depriving health care operations of any money.
Governors Asking for Flexibility, Not Cash, for Medicaid
Cash-strapped governors have started to take a different tack with federal lawmakers as Capitol Hill has turned more conservative. Instead of financial assistance, they’re asking for flexibility, and in place of a bailout, they’re pitching a vision of self-reliance.

TUESDAY
GOP hedges on health care funds
House Republicans say they're all on the same page about wanting to choke off funding for President Barack Obama's health care law, but in their first real spending bill of 2011, it looks like they're leaving that priority on the cutting room floor.
Officials Might Tweak Health-Law Program
The Obama administration is looking at modifying a workers' long-term-care insurance program included in last year's health-care overhaul, responding to criticism that the plan is fiscally unsustainable.
Sebelius Outlines Ideas for Long-Term-Care Program
Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius today outlined several significant changes needed to a long-term-care insurance program authorized in the health care law, but said that her office has the flexibility to ensure the program's success.
A new Dem threat to health care law
A handful of moderate Senate Democrats are looking for ways to roll back the highly contentious indiviual mandate - the pillar of President Barack Obama's health care law - a sign that red-state senators are prepared to assert their independence ahead of the 2012 elections.

MONDAY
The Justice Will See You Now
The fate of Obama’s health-care law may rest with one man.
GOP govs push for health changes
Republican governors are petitioning HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to make specific changes to the new health exchanges, threatening to pull back on running the exchanges themselves if their demands are not met.

Economist Comments
THURSDAY
Health Reform Waiver Controversy Heats Up
The number of companies and labor unions winning temporary waivers from health reform has spiked to 733, more than triple the 222 granted in November 2010, and up dramatically from 30 in October.
The Next Repeal Target
No one should expect much real health-care progress for the next two years, but at least President Obama is now making concessions to the political mood, however minor. The White House is suddenly trying to pacify the critics it used to claim were partisans, or industry shills, or arguing in bad faith.
Obama, Ryan, and Medicare Costs
Ryan and Rivlin have a better chance of bending the cost curve.

WEDNESDAY
Is inbound marketing coming to healthcare?
Imagine a future in which new medicines and treatment options come to you, instead of you or your doctor needing to go to them.
Who Was Denied Health Reform Waivers?
The Dept. of Health and Human Services has given a grand total of 733 waivers for the annual benefit limits established under the Patient Protection and Accountability Act.
Health-Care Investment—The Hidden Crisis
When the stock market values companies that make cosmetics and beer far above pharmaceutical companies, you know that incentives are out of whack.
Upton: More Dems Would Support Repeal of Individual Mandate
In a conversation with National Journal Group Editorial Director Ronald Brownstein, House Energy and Commerce Chairman Fred Upton of Michigan argues for repealing the individual mandate for health insurance converage.

TUESDAY
Fix Or Repeal? Obama's Health Care Trap
There is almost no individual provision of Obamacare that most Republicans would vote against repealing.

MONDAY
WOLF: USS Obamacare takes on more water
Titanic failures for the health care law proponents.
An ObamaCare Appeal From the States
Twenty-one governors representing more than 115 million Americans have written to Kathleen Sebelius asking for more flexibility on health-care reform.

Blogs
FRIDAY
An Opportunity to Defund Obamacare
Rescinding the billions appropriated to Obamacare would help reach the GOP’s well-publicized pledge to cut spending by $100 billion in their first year as a majority.
CBO Director Says Obamacare Would Reduce Employment
Testifying today before the House Budget Committee, Congressional Budget Office (CBO) Director Doug Elmendorf confirmed that Obamacare is expected to reduce the number of jobs in the labor market by an estimated 800,000. Here are excerpts from the exchange:
Why Ryan-Rivlin Beats ObamaCare on Costs — and Spending
There are two reasons why the Medicare spending restraints in the Ryan-Rivlin proposal are more likely to hold than those in ObamaCare.

THURSDAY
The Contradictions of ObamaCare
Why does Health and Human Services want to exempt millions of consumers from an ObamaCare regulation it just implemented to protect consumers?

TUESDAY
Side Effects: Children Face Reduced Access to Coverage Under Obamacare
While the Senate failed last week to pass a full repeal of Obamacare, the negative effects of the health care overhaul continue to build the case for scrapping it and starting over.

MONDAY
If Health Mandate Is Unconstitutional, Are Social Security Accounts Too?
Back in the 1930s, it was taken for granted by the Roosevelt administration that the Supreme Court wouldn’t approve a quasi-insurance program like Social Security, in which individuals paid taxes today in exchange for benefits at a later date. To help get around that problem, Social Security was structured as, in effect, two separate programs: first, a tax on individual earnings, and second, a benefit based upon individual earnings.
Responding to Akhil Amar on Obamacare
There is nothing improper in the means that Obamacare deploys. Laws may properly regulate both actions and inactions, and in any event, Obamacare does not regulate pure inaction. It regulates freeloading. Breathing is an action, and so is going to an emergency room on taxpayers' nickel when you have trouble breathing.
Sentences to ponder, the progress of health
Even in health care the big explosion was 1900 to the 1960's when life expectancy rose from 47 to about 70.
After Florida, What’s to Be Done about ObamaCare?
Uncertainty over the practical effect of Judge Roger Vinson’s decision on Monday that ObamaCare is unconstitutional in its entirety continues to swirl all across the country. The day after the decision came down, as I noted here on Wednesday, Wisconsin Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen, one of the parties to the suit, issued a statement saying: “This means that, for Wisconsin, the federal health care law is dead," and his state "was relieved of any obligations or duties" to carry out the statute.
Senate Judiciary Committee Hearing: Arguments for Individual Mandate’s Constitutionality Don’t Hold Up
If Congress can force Americans to purchase health insurance, they can force them to purchase just about any commodity, and the limited and enumerated powers of Congress would become limitless.

Reports
TUESDAY
How Obamacare Undercuts Existing Health Insurance
In response to public opposition to enactment of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), President Obama assured Americans that if they were happy with their current health insurance, nothing in the PPACA would force them to change their coverage. This promise has been broken.