Archives: Morning Breakouts

Student loan reform provisions tucked into the reconciliation bill are helping to offset the cost of the health care overhaul.

As the overhaul bill approaches an expected vote this weekend, House members are feeling the personal side of health care.

A previously steadfast coalition opposed to abortion

As vote draws near, interest groups hit high gear on health care reform.

As lawmakers seek to challenge Democrats' health overhaul legislation, GOP activists are also encouraging states to oppose the measure and seeking to energize conservatives for the upcoming election.

Pelosi calls questions about voting procedure a "nonissue," and White House says President Barack Obama has no constitutional concerns about signing a bill passed that way.

The legislative package would close the doughnut hole in the Medicare prescription drug program, boost subsidies for lower-income individuals to buy insurance and push back the implementation date of the tax on Cadillac insurance plans.

USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah was in Seattle on Tuesday to speak at the annual Life Science Innovation Northwest conference, the Seattle Times' blog, "The Business of Giving," reports. The blog outlines the Obama administration's global health and development goals, including the six-year $63 billion Global Health Initiative (GHI), as well as some of the challenges facing Shah at USAID.

The FDA is drafting new guidelines for testing and approving multidrug cocktails for life-threatening diseases, the Wall Street Journal reports. "Many diseases, such as AIDS, tuberculosis and cancer, require multidrug combinations. Such drug cocktails can prevent the development of drug resistance, because the microbe or cancer cell needs to undergo more mutations to escape several drugs than to escape just one. By attacking the disease in different ways, drug combinations also improve the chances of therapeutic benefit," the newspaper reports (Schoofs, 3/18).

Agriculture ministers from Latin America and the Caribbean came together Tuesday to discuss strategies aimed at eradicating hunger and poverty by 2025, Xinhua/People's Daily Online reports.

Both the substance and process of the Democratic plan is taking shape.

A pilot crop insurance project, recently launched in Kenya, aims to compensate small-scale farmers when crops fail in an effort to break the cycle of poverty, the Business Daily reports. While crop insurance is widely used in the developed world, cost has been a major barrier to offering it to small-scale farmers in the developing world. In addition, "micro-insurance, particularly for agriculture, has largely failed because it offered no immediate benefit to farmers," the newspaper reports (Mbogo, 3/18).

President Obama and Democratic leaders continue to round up votes for the health overhaul.

Money in the health care debate funds the large amount of television advertising about health reform and might also be affecting Congressional fundraising.