First Edition: November 24, 2014
Today’s early morning highlights from the major news organizations.
Kaiser Health News:
Some Experts Dispute Claims Of Looming Doctor Shortage
You hear it so often it’s almost a cliché: The nation is facing a serious shortage of doctors, particularly doctors who practice primary care, in the coming years. But is that really the case? Many medical groups, led by the Association of American Medical Colleges, say there’s little doubt. 'We think the shortage is going to be close to 130,000 in the next 10 to 12 years,' says Atul Grover, the group’s chief public policy officer. But others, particularly health care economists, are less convinced. (Rovner, 11/24)
Kaiser Health News:
Wall Street Is Bullish On 2015 Obamacare Enrollment
A group of Wall Street analysts predicted Friday that enrollment in health law insurance plans will be higher than the 9 million projected by the Obama administration because insurers are aggressively courting new customers and more small businesses are likely to send workers to the online exchanges in 2015.(Appleby, 11/21)
Kaiser Health News:
Alaska Doctors Overwhelmed By New Federal Rules
Dr. Oliver Korshin is a 71-year-old ophthalmologist in Anchorage – and he is not happy about the federal government’s plan to have all physicians use electronic medical records or face a Medicare penalty. A few months ago when he applied for an exemption to the latest requirement, he had to pick an exemption category that fit. "The only one that possibly applied to me was disaster," Korshin says. "So I picked disaster and I described my disaster as old age and I submitted as my supporting document a copy of my passport." (Feidt, 11/24)
The New York Times:
In Partisan Washington, Health Law Faces Grave Legal Technicalities
Today the Affordable Care Act faces grave danger before the United States Supreme Court because ... legislative repair work, once routine, has grown impossible. The challenge in King v. Burwell, the case that the court recently accepted, rests on a part of the law creating taxpayer subsidies for the purchase of health insurance through marketplaces “established by the state.” That phrase, the plaintiffs argue, prohibits subsidies for purchasers using marketplaces established by the federal government for the 37 states that do not have their own. ... A simple technical corrections bill, specifying that consumers using the federal marketplace would receive subsidies as well, would resolve the ambiguity. But his fellow Republicans, [Ron] Haskins says, will not “lift a finger” to fix a law they loathe. (Harwood, 11/23)
USA Today:
Four Words That Could Deep-Six Obamacare
The most serious challenge to President Obama's health care law since it survived the Supreme Court by a single vote in 2012 isn't a balky website, public opinion or the Republican takeover of Congress. It's the Supreme Court — again. In a case likely to be heard in March and decided in June, the justices will dissect the meaning of four words on page 95 of the 906-page Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act — four words that could render health insurance premiums unaffordable for millions of Americans. Here's a look at the issues in King v. Burwell. (Wolf, 11/22)
The New York Times:
Private Oncologists Being Forced Out, Leaving Patients To Face Higher Bills
When Dr. Jeffery Ward, a cancer specialist, and his partners sold their private practice to the Swedish Medical Center in Seattle, the hospital built them a new office suite 50 yards from the old place. The practice was bigger, but Dr. Ward saw the same patients and provided chemotherapy just like before. On the surface, nothing had changed but the setting. But there was one big difference. Treatments suddenly cost more, with higher co-payments for patients and higher bills for insurers. Because of quirks in the payment system, patients and their insurers pay hospitals and their doctors about twice what they pay independent oncologists for administering cancer treatments. (Kolata, 11/23)
The Associated Press:
Health Exchanges' Finances Face Test In 2nd Year
The federal government shelled out billions of dollars to get health insurance marketplaces going in the 14 states that opted to run their own. Now they must act like true marketplaces and start paying for themselves. Under President Barack Obama's Affordable Care Act, state-run health insurance exchanges need to be financially self-sustaining starting in January. Some appear to be on that path, while others have shaky funding models or even none at all. (Niedowski, 11/23)
Los Angeles Times:
House Republicans Sue Obama Over Affordable Care Act Enactment
After searching for months to find an attorney who would take their case, House Republicans made good on their threat to sue the Obama administration Friday, filing a lawsuit challenging the president's authority to enact key parts of the Affordable Care Act. The case has been considered a long shot by legal scholars, as the Supreme Court has repeatedly rebuffed members of Congress suing on constitutional grounds. (Levey, 11/21)
The New York Times:
House G.O.P. Files Lawsuit In Battling Health Law
The suit accuses the Obama administration of unlawfully postponing a requirement that larger employers offer health coverage to their full-time employees or pay penalties. (Larger companies are defined as those with 50 or more employees.) ... The suit also challenges what it says is President Obama’s unlawful giveaway of roughly $175 billion to insurance companies under the law. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the administration will pay that amount to the companies over the next 10 years, though the funds have not been appropriated by Congress. (Parker, 11/21)
The Wall Street Journal:
House GOP Files Lawsuit Over Health Law
House Speaker John Boehner (R., Ohio) said in a statement that lawmakers had an obligation to act to protect the Constitution. “Time after time, the president has chosen to ignore the will of the American people and rewrite federal law on his own without a vote of Congress. That’s not the way our system of government was designed to work,” he said. (Crittenden and Kendall, 11/21)
Politico:
House Files Obamacare Lawsuit
The White House dismissed the lawsuit Friday as meritless and as a waste of money. “Instead of passing legislation to help expand the middle class and grow the economy, Speaker Boehner and House Republicans are spending hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars pursuing a lawsuit that is without any sound legal basis,” White House spokeswoman Brandi Hoffine said. (Gerstein and French, 11/21)
The Wall Street Journal The Law blog:
The Boehner Lawsuit Against Obama: An Explainer
The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Washington, D.C. and drafted by George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley, escalates a brewing battle between GOP lawmakers and the Obama administration over separation of powers. Here’s a quick overview of its legal arguments. (Gershman, 11/21)
Los Angeles Times:
Immigration Overhaul Could Boost Latino Enrollment In Obamacare
President Obama's new immigration overhaul could increase Latino enrollment under his signature health law by reducing the threat of deportation and making more Californians comfortable signing up for coverage they already qualify to get. Over time, the initiative may also pave the way for more Californians to become eligible for state-funded Medi-Cal coverage. Friday, state officials were noncommittal about that idea, and said they would have to assess the effect of the president's immigration proposal. (Terhune and Brown, 11/22)
USA Today:
House Panel Calls Obamacare 'Architect' Gruber To Testify
The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee has asked Jonathan Gruber, the economist and Obama administration adviser who admitted that "lack of transparency" helped pass the health law known as Obamacare, to testify about those statements. (Korte, 11/21)
The Wall Street Journal:
House Committee Calls Gruber To Testify At Obamacare Hearing
Jonathan Gruber, an MIT economist under fire for comments he made about the Affordable Care Act, is being asked to testify next month before Congress in a probe of the health law. The House Oversight and Government Committee has requested that Mr. Gruber and Marilyn Tavenner, administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, appear Dec. 9 to testify about “transparency failures and outright deceptions” surrounding the Affordable Care Act, according to a press release issued Friday. (Armour, 11/21)
Politico:
Push For More Openness After Obamacare Data Mix-Up
Controversy over inflated Obamacare enrollment numbers has renewed demands for the administration to be far more open about sign-up data and other crucial aspects of the health care law. ... The [House Oversight Committee] has called CMS Administrator Marilyn Tavenner and former Obamacare adviser Jonathan Gruber — the center of a separate flare-up over the law’s passage — to testify next month about the “repeated transparency failures and outright deceptions.” (Norman and Pradhan, 11/22)
The Washington Post:
North Carolina Fires Gruber After Obamacare Remarks
North Carolina’s state auditor on Thursday terminated a contract with Jonathan Gruber, the MIT economics professor and health-care expert whose comments on the Affordable Care Act have generated fury among conservatives. Auditor Beth Wood (D) had hired Gruber to analyze the state’s Community Care of North Carolina program, which provides managed care to the poor and disabled. Gov. Pat McCrory (R) and state lawmakers involved in reforming the state’s Medicaid system were studying whether to include the Community Care program in the reformed system. (Wilson, 11/21)
The Wall Street Journal:
Health Officials Propose Setting Fall Sign-Up Window Under Federal Health Law
The sign-up period for coverage under the federal health law will start Oct. 1 and run through Dec. 15 next year, and every year after, the Obama administration proposed in a rule released late Friday. The timing of the health law’s enrollment window has been the subject of debate. In the first year of the law’s exchanges, it started Oct. 1, 2013 and ran through March 31, 2014. This year, it started Nov. 15 and will run through Feb. 15, 2015. Some academics and supporters of the law have criticized the decision to schedule the period around the holidays, when consumers’ attention and wallets are stretched. Tax preparers have also said they could help more people sign up if the period included the spring. (Radnofsky, 11/21)
The Washington Post:
Puckett’s Senate Exit Undid McAuliffe’s Secret Plan For Medicaid Expansion
[Former Virginia State Sen. Phillip P. Puckett's] resignation exacerbated an increasingly partisan atmosphere in Richmond. Its reverberations are likely to make it more difficult for [Gov. Terry] McAuliffe to work with a GOP-controlled legislature to get anything done during the remainder of his term. The Washington Post interviewed more than a dozen people and reviewed scores of e-mails and text and voice messages to piece together new details about how Puckett’s resignation unfolded. (Vozzella, 11/22)
Los Angeles Times:
Medical And Tech Researchers See Smartphones As Health's Next Frontier
The West Hollywood club scene was just picking up as Charles Lea and other UCLA grad students fanned out along Santa Monica Boulevard. Their goal that evening: Find young black men, gay and bisexual, willing to participate in a study on how smartphone apps can help improve overall health and combat diseases such as AIDS and diabetes. ... The effort reflects both the potential and the challenges facing investors, medical experts and government officials who want to harness the reach and power of mobile phones to revolutionize healthcare. (Brown, 11/22)
The New York Times:
Notable Absence Of New Ebola Quarantines At New York Area Airports
A day after a doctor who had returned from Guinea about a week earlier became New York’s first Ebola case, the governors of New York and New Jersey announced that they would begin quarantining travelers who had been in contact with Ebola patients in West Africa. ... But since Kaci Hickox, a nurse, flew into Newark’s airport on Oct. 24 and was kept at a hospital for three days, no one else has been caught up in the quarantine dragnet at the New York and New Jersey airports. (Hartocollis, 11/23)
The Wall Street Journal:
A Medical Device Is Sidelined, But Too Late For One Woman
Dozens of cases have come to light this year of women whose cancers rapidly worsened after morcellation. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration warned in April that the tools can worsen cancer. The top U.S. morcellator maker, Johnson & Johnson, halted sales in April, and many hospitals have curtailed their use. While the newfound scrutiny of the morcellator may save lives, women like Mrs. Interlichia and their families are still paying a grim price for decisions they and their doctors made not long before the alarms rang. (Levitz and Kamp, 11/21)
The Wall Street Journal:
Cancer-Risk Debate Didn’t Halt Surgeries
Doctors at a prominent Boston hospital continued to use a surgical tool during hysterectomies for two years after compiling data in 2011 that questioned the safety of the device and discussing its risks, said hospital officials and doctors. Brigham and Women’s Hospital curtailed use of the device, the laparoscopic power morcellator in December 2013, acknowledging it had spread a dangerous cancer in two of its patients, one in 2012 and the other in 2013. In March, the Harvard University-affiliated hospital became one of the first in the nation to stop using the tool. (Levitz, 11/23)
The Washington Post:
Alzheimer’s Risk Is Higher In African Americans, But Many Fear Clinical Studies
Studies show that older African Americans are almost twice as likely as whites to develop Alzheimer’s disease for genetic, biological and socioeconomic reasons. ... Yet relatively few African Americans want to talk about Alzheimer’s, which is the leading cause of dementia. For historical reasons, even fewer want to participate in clinical research trials that could deliver benefits to themselves and future generations. ... The effort to engage African Americans on Alzheimer’s comes as the U.S. population ages and becomes more diverse. (Kunkle, 11/23)