CNN: GOP Agenda For Congress: Challenge Obama, Prove They Can Govern
If Republican leaders can quell conservative dissatisfaction with House Speaker John Boehner, and no further drama comes out from the House leadership's No. 3 Rep. Steve Scalise, GOP heads hope to get back on track with their aggressive agenda to forcefully confront President Barack Obama on the top issues of the day, including the Keystone XL pipeline, immigration, health care and national security. (Walsh and Barrett, 1/5)

The New York Times: Resistance From Right Slows G.O.P. Press To Redefine Full-Time Worker
One of the new Republican Congress’s first legislative priorities — redefining a full-time worker under the Affordable Care Act — is gaining opposition just days before passage from a surprising group: conservatives. The House will take up legislation on Wednesday, the first major bill of the 114th Congress, that would change the definition of a full-time worker under the health law from one who works 30 hours a week to one who works 40 hours. A vote is scheduled for Thursday. Writing this weekend in National Review, Yuval Levin, a conservative popular with House Republicans, said the legislation “seems likely to be worse than doing nothing.” His rationale is that there are many more people who work 40 hours a week than just over 30, and that it would be easier for an employer to cut their hours to 39 a week to avoid offering them insurance than to 29. (Weisman, 1/5)

The Hill: Medical Device Tax In GOP Crosshairs
Repealing ObamaCare’s controversial medical device tax will be a top priority for the new GOP-controlled Congress, as Republicans and industry groups look to take their biggest legislative bite yet out of the president’s signature healthcare law. (Ferris, 1/6)

The Hill: Cantor: GOP Focus On Obamacare Would Be 'Disservice'
Former House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) said Monday that a GOP focus on highly politicized issues like ObamaCare and immigration in 2015 would be a “disservice to the American people.” (Ferris, 1/5)

The Associated Press: New Congress Getting Sworn In With GOP In Charge
Republicans are assuming full control of Congress for the first time in eight years in a day of pomp, circumstance and raw politics beneath the Capitol Dome. (Werner, 1/6)

Los Angeles Times: Republicans Take Helm Of Congress, But Initial Course Is Unclear
For Republicans, their performance in the coming months will become a referendum not only on their ability to lead — a key question in the 2016 presidential race — but on what has become the party's increasingly conservative ideology. The incoming House Budget Chairman, Rep. Tom Price of Georgia, vows to deliver a spending blueprint that builds on the austerity outlined by his predecessor, Rep. Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.), the former vice presidential nominee, with cuts to Medicare, Medicaid and other safety-net programs. (Mascaro, 1/5)

CQ HealthBeat: Cole Looks For Consensus Shepherding Labor-HHS Spending Bill
While there is likely to be no shortage of “flash points” between the parties regarding health care in the new Congress, the House Republican who will oversee much of the federal medical discretionary spending has a strategy for finding consensus on significant policy changes could be achieved through spending bills. "If you have enough hearings, people find areas where surprisingly they agree, and they have a chance to appreciate one another and develop relationships,” said Rep. Tom Cole, R-Okla., who will become chairman of the Labor-Health and Human Services-Education Appropriations panel in the 114th Congress. “If you want to work past the talking points and the friction points, you have to have enough meetings and enough dialogue to find some areas of common thought.” (Young, 1/5)

Bloomberg: Hatch’s Well-Worn Gavel To Shape Deals In Republican-Led Senate
The Republicans are taking over the U.S. Senate again, and just as in 1981, 1995 and 2003, [Sen. Orrin Hatch] from Utah will have a central role, this time as chairman of the Finance Committee that controls tax, trade and health policy. Hatch will start the year by trying to expedite free-trade deals and repeal a tax on medical devices, while working on the long-term project of revising the U.S. tax code. (Rubin, 1/6)

The Boston Globe: Health Care Site Has A Few Glitches
A small number of people are having trouble completing the enrollment process for health insurance, even as the Massachusetts Health Connector logs ever-growing numbers of paid enrollees, reaching 55,260 by Dec. 30. (Freyer, 1/6)

The Baltimore Sun: Health Exchange Enrolls More Than 156,000 People
The Maryland health exchange reported Monday that 156,305 people had signed up for public and private insurance during open enrollment, which lasts until Feb. 15. The exchange, created under the Affordable Care Act for people who do not get insurance through employers, enrolled more than 87,000 in private plans. Like last year, the bulk picked plans offered by CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield. (Cohn, 1/5)

Minnesota Public Radio: MNsure Touts Health Plan Sign-Ups, Says It's On Track To Meet Goal
MNsure ended 2014 with 31,159 people enrolling in private health insurance and officials with the insurance exchange say they're on track to meet their goal of enrolling at least 67,000 people in commercial plans this year. (Zdechlik, 1/5)

California Healthline: Covered California Board About To Get Makeover
Three of the five Covered California Board of Directors seats are about to get newly appointed occupants in a shift that could have significant influence on the future of the four-year-old health insurance exchange. (Lauer, 1/5)

Other news outlets report on how the health law and enrollment are impacting the health care marketplace -

Modern Healthcare: How Obamacare Is Affecting Health Insurance Enrollment
Obamacare has expanded health insurance to millions of Americans, and the latest enrollment data show that the individual and managed Medicaid markets have ballooned the most over the past year. (Herman, 1/5)

Politico Pro: State High-Risk Pools Still In Business
State high-risk pools were supposed to phase out when Obamacare went into full gear. That hasn’t exactly happened. Sixteen are still providing coverage, and some may operate well into 2015 as a potential backup option should the Supreme Court strip the law’s premium subsidies in states with federal-run exchanges, says the head of the pools’ trade association. (Pradhan, 1/6)

And, on the Medicaid front -

NPR: 3 States Counter Obama's Proposal For Medicaid Expansion
States have a year to get full funding for Medicaid expansion under Obamacare. The governors of Utah, Wyoming and Montana are trying to get the money but their legislators may derail the efforts. (Whitney, 1/6)

The New York Times: Harvard Ideas On Health Care Hit Home, Hard
For years, Harvard’s experts on health economics and policy have advised presidents and Congress on how to provide health benefits to the nation at a reasonable cost. But those remedies will now be applied to the Harvard faculty, and the professors are in an uproar. (Pear, 1/5)

The Washington Post's Wonkblog: Harvard Professors Are Angry That Their Amazing Health Insurance Is Getting Slightly Less Generous
But Harvard employees will still have it really, really good compared to the rest of the country. The new employee health plan, according to the Times, comes with annual deductibles of $250 for an individual and $750 for family coverage before the insurance kicks in. I put together a quick chart to show how Harvard’s new deductibles stack up to typical employer coverage and health plans in new Obamacare exchanges. (Millman, 1/5)

The Wall Street Journal: CVS Gives Preferred Status To Gilead’s Hepatitis C Drugs
The battle for supremacy in one of the fastest-growing pharmaceutical markets intensified on Monday, with CVS Health Corp. saying it will make Gilead Sciences Inc. ’s drugs Sovaldi and Harvoni the exclusive options for patients with hepatitis C. A competing treatment made by AbbVie Inc., called Viekira Pak, will be excluded from CVS’s drug formulary of approved medications, except in cases when it is medically necessary, CVS said in a letter sent to employment-benefit consultants that was reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. (Walker, 1/5)

Reuters: CVS To Cover Gilead Hepatitis C Treatment Over AbbVie Regimen
CVS Health Corp, one of the largest U.S. managers of drug benefits, said it would give preferred status to the hepatitis C treatments from Gilead Sciences and cover a new competing treatment from AbbVie Inc only as an exception. The latest salvo in the battle to grab market share for new all-oral treatments for the liver-destroying hepatitis C virus follows a move last month by CVS rival Express Scripts Holding that favored AbbVie's regimen after negotiating a price discount below what Gilead had been charging its commercial customers. (Berkrot and Humer, 1/5)

Also in the news, a new drug moves closer to the U.S. market.

The Wall Street Journal's Pharmalot: FDA Staff Recommends Novartis Biosimilar Version Of An Amgen Drug
The U.S. market may be a step closer to having the first biosimilar available for patients. In documents released today, FDA reviewers determined that there are “no clinically meaningful differences” between Neupogen, an Amgen medicine that is used to fend off infections during chemotherapy, and a biosimilar version that is being developed by Sandoz. ... Biosimilar drugs are cheaper versions of expensive and complex medicines made from biological matter and are among the biggest-selling medicines in the world. A number of biosimilars are available in Europe, where the products have been allowed since 2005. (Silverman, 1/5)

Modern Healthcare: Hospital Quality Reporting May Hold Down Prices
More public reporting on hospital quality could help to reduce hospital prices, results of a study suggest. The prices for two common cardiac procedures did not increase as quickly in states where the first public reporting on cardiac quality occurred when Medicare released it in 2007, researchers reported in the latest issue of Health Affairs. Prices for the same two procedures grew more quickly in states where cardiac quality data already was available. (Evans, 1/5)

CBS News: "America's Bitter Pill" Author Steven Brill On Obamacare
Brill, who has spent years investigating the healthcare industry and the creation of the Affordable Care Act, said Obamacare has made healthcare more accessible for Americans; but the overall cost of healthcare has not gone down as the president said would happen. (1/5)

Minneapolis Star-Tribune: The VA Incorrectly Reports Suicide Data And Does A Poor Job Of Tracking Vets At Risk, GAO Finds
Despite heightened awareness of military suicides, the Department of Veterans Affairs is incorrectly reporting suicide data and does a poor job of tracking and caring for vets at risk who are prescribed antidepressants, according to a report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office. (Brunswick, 1/5)

The Washington Post: Veterans Discharged After Sexual Trauma Push For VA Health Benefits
It took Navy Airman Apprentice Elena M. Giordano nine years to finally be granted service-connected disability compensation from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs for the post-traumatic stress disorder she suffered after multiple sexual assaults. Until recently, she was also not eligible for any VA medical care or other benefits because she was told she did not serve long enough. (Wax-Thibodeaux, 1/6)

NPR: Big Data Not A Cure-All In Medicine
Big data is a trendy term for the ever-expanding cloud of information that's online and increasingly searchable. Some researchers say it could change the way medical research is done and the way individual doctors make medical decisions. Others say big data raises too many big questions — especially when it comes to medicine. (Standen, 1/5)

Politico Pro: End-Of-Life Instructions Find No Place In EHR
U.S. hospitals are spending billions of dollars on computerized medical records so doctors can access everything they need to know about our health. But not about how we want to die. (Kenen, 1/5)

Meanwhile, other news outlets look at some specific apps being used to improve care -

The Wall Street Journal: Can A Smartphone Tell If You’re Depressed?
The app was part of an effort by Ms. Flowers ’s health-care provider to test whether smartphone data could help detect symptoms of postpartum depression, an underdiagnosed condition affecting women after they give birth. The app’s developer, San Francisco-based Ginger.io Inc., compared data from Ms. Flowers and nearly 200 other women against their answers to a weekly survey used to diagnose depression. The company says it found that behavioral patterns like decreased mobility on weekends and longer phone calls were associated with poor mood in surveys. (Walker, 1/5)

NPR: Self-Tracking Gadgets That Play Doctor Abound At CES
This week, Las Vegas hosts the International Consumer Electronics Show where companies large and small set up shop in the giant convention center to demo their latest cars, TVs, games and gadgets. This year a new wave of trackers and online tools, wristbands and apps, are hitting the show — ones that collect your vital signs for medical purposes. (Shahani, 1/5)

Reuters: Flu Widespread In 43 U.S. States: CDC Report
Flu is widespread in 43 U.S. states, up from 36 states in the prior week, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported on Monday. Six children died from the flu during the last full week in December, bringing the total flu deaths to 21 this season, the report showed. (Steenhuysen, 1/5)

In other public health news -

Reuters: U.S. Ends Special Ebola Screening For Travelers From Mali
Travelers from Mali will no longer face enhanced screening upon arrival in the United States, U.S. officials said on Monday, in a move reflecting the West African nation's gains over Ebola. (Heavey, 1/5)

Los Angeles Times: Blue Shield In Dispute With Sutter Health Over Costs
In a high-stakes fight over healthcare costs, insurance giant Blue Shield of California contends that a major hospital chain is trying to hide some of its business practices from public scrutiny. The dispute has prevented Blue Shield and Sutter Health, which runs 23 hospitals in Northern California, from reaching a new contract that could affect numerous employers and consumers. Their previous agreement expired Dec. 31. (Terhune, 1/5)

The Associated Press: Maine Governor Spent $53K In Medicaid Fight
Gov. Paul LePage's administration spent nearly $53,000 on private lawyers in its failed attempt to remove thousands of low-income young adults from the state's Medicaid program after being told by Maine's attorney general that he couldn't win the case, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press. The Republican governor went to the 1st Circuit Court of Appeals after the federal government denied his request to end Medicaid coverage for about 6,000 19- and 20-year olds. He was forced to seek outside counsel after Attorney General Janet Mills, a Democrat, declined to represent the state. (Durkin, 1/5)

Los Angeles Times: Proposed Sale Of Lynwood Hospital To Prime Healthcare Debated
Hundreds of health professionals engaged in a spirited debate Monday about the proposed sale of a nonprofit Lynwood hospital to a for-profit hospital company in Ontario. St. Francis Medical Center is one of six struggling Roman Catholic nonprofit hospitals that Prime Healthcare Services has agreed to buy for about $843 million in cash and assumed liabilities. (Pfeifer, 1/5)

Columbus Dispatch: Cut In Fees Will Sour Doctors On Medicaid Patients
A 43 percent cut in Medicaid payments to primary-care physicians that began on Thursday could leave some low-income Ohioans searching for care — and a doctor. ... With Congress unlikely to extend enhanced fees, the Ohio State Medical Association is lobbying Gov. John Kasich to pick up the $630 million-plus annual cost in his proposed two-year state budget. (Ludlow, 1/3)

The Hill: Study: 231 New Abortion Limits Since 2010
States have enacted 231 new restrictions on abortion since Republicans swept legislative elections in 2010, according to a new study released Monday. The Guttmacher Institute, a research group that supports abortion rights, found a dramatic spike in limitations on the procedure around the country between 2011 and 2014. (Viebeck, 1/5)

Reuters: U.S. Appeals Court To Hear Arguments On Texas Abortion Restrictions
Texas abortion rights advocates will be in a U.S. appeals court this week to challenge state abortion restrictions they say are aimed more at shutting clinics than protecting women's health. A panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans convenes on Wednesday to consider whether a requirement under Texas law for abortion clinics to have certain hospital-like settings for surgeries is warranted. (Garza, 1/5)

Georgia Health News: Innovative Mental Health Program Short On Funds
Mental health experts in Georgia say federal spending cuts will weaken a program that trains ordinary citizens to provide “first aid” for a person experiencing a mental health crisis. (Adcock, 1/5)

The Associated Press: Portland, Ore., Police Rethink How To Respond To Mentally Ill People
Portland police have drafted a new policy for dealing with mentally ill people that says sometimes it’s OK for an officer to walk away if a confrontation could jeopardize a suspect or other people. The policy follows a settlement last summer between the city and the U.S. Justice Department, which found that officers had a pattern of excessive force against people who have, or seem to have, mental illness, the Oregonian reported Monday. (1/5)

The Wall Street Journal: Justice Department Joins Suits Against Florida Cardiologist
The Justice Department said it joined two whistleblower lawsuits against one of the highest-billing doctors in the Medicare program. The two whistleblower suits allege that Ocala, Fla., cardiologist Asad Qamar performed and billed for numerous procedures that were medically unnecessary, and illegally waived co-payments so that patients wouldn’t second-guess his treatment recommendations. (Stewart and Carreyou, 1/5)

NPR: Addiction Patients Overwhelm Vermont's Expanded Treatment Programs
Vermont Gov. Peter Shumlin attracted national attention last January when he devoted his entire State of the State address to Vermont's opiate addiction problem. For the first time, he said, the number of people seeking drug addiction treatment had surpassed those getting help for alcoholism, and many had nowhere to go. (Zind, 1/6)

Kaiser Health News: Lots Of Responsibility For In-Home Care Providers — But No Training Required
No overall training is required for the more than 400,000 caregivers in California’s $7.3 billion In-Home Supportive Services Program (IHSS) for low-income elderly and disabled residents. Without instruction even in CPR or first aid, these caregivers can quickly become overwhelmed and their sick or disabled clients can get hurt, according to interviews with caregivers, advocates and elder abuse experts. (Gorman, 1/6)

The Wall Street Journal: There Are No Magic Republican Bullets
There is considerable talk by pundits and members of Congress that the best weapon Republicans have to accomplish their agenda is something called “reconciliation.” ... The budget does not affect entitlement spending — unless, and here is the kicker, the budget includes “reconciliation” instructions. Those instructions specifically direct the committees with jurisdiction over entitlements such as Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, farm subsidies, student loans and veterans benefits to change those programs to save a specific amount of money. This then triggers a crucial moment. Any of the changes to entitlements under reconciliation must meet something called the Byrd Rule. This requires (to simplify) that the primary result of the changes must be to reduce entitlement spending, not to change the policy purposes of the entitlement. (Judd Gregg, 1/5)

The Wall Street Journal: A Better Congress
The problem with grandiose ultimatums — such as defunding ObamaCare or else — is not merely their predictable result of accomplishing zero. They also undermine the intelligent if undramatic tactics that, at the margins over time, can change how government works. Conservatives in the House are naturally frustrated by the lack of progress on larger tax and entitlement reform, but they’ve been too quick to elevate tactical disagreements into psychodramas. (1/5)

The Washington Post's PostPartisan: Less ‘Scary’ GOP Must Face Nightmare Over Potential Obamacare Demise
Congressional Republican leaders are eager to prove to themselves and the nation they can govern. Incoming Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell went so far as to tell The Post today that his goal is to make the GOP less “scary.” That’s nice. Pity the party’s obsession with the repeal of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) is going to make that as elusive a goal as McConnell’s other stated ambition. The Supreme Court is about to hear arguments in a case that seeks to void the federal health insurance subsidies of Obamacare, thereby gutting the law. (Jonathan Capehart, 1/5)

The Wall Street Journal's Washington Wire: Which Path For Health-Care Politics In 2015?
The key to which path the Affordable Care Act takes is how the Supreme Court rules in King v. Burwell, the case that concerns whether subsidies in the health law can be provided to millions of low- and middle-income enrollees in states with federally run insurance marketplaces. The effect on people as well as politics could be substantial. A decision for the plaintiffs would deny insurance subsidies for millions, threaten the viability of the marketplaces, and potentially throw the ACA back into the congressional arena (and onto front pages nationwide). Partisan debate about the health-care law could reignite nationwide. (Drew Altman, 1/6)

Los Angeles Times: The Mortal Threat To Medicaid -- And How To Fix It
Jan. 1 was a red-letter day for America's provision of healthcare to its poorest residents -- and we do mean red. That was the expiration day of a two-year bump in Medicaid reimbursements for primary care physicians seeing Medicaid patients. The raise, which was part of the Affordable Care Act, temporarily raised Medicaid rates to the level of Medicare reimbursements; the expiration means a drop averaging nearly 43 percent nationwide, according to calculations by the Urban Institute. (Michael Hiltzik, 1/5)

Forbes: Doctors Face A Huge Medicare And Medicaid Pay Cut In 2015
If you thought it was getting increasingly difficult for Medicare and Medicaid patients to see a doctor, you’re right — and that problem may get even worse in 2015. Doctors who still accept Medicare patients could see an average reduction of 21.2 percent in Medicare reimbursement rates, according the Department of Health and Human Services. And a new Urban Institute study claims primary care physicians who still take Medicaid patients could see an average reduction of 42.8 percent. Think those pay cuts just might affect access to medical care? At issue is what the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, did and did not do. (Merrill Matthews, 1/5)

The Wall Street Journal's Washington Wire: Obamacare And Tax Complications
This tax-filing season brings the first enforcement of the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate – the complexity of which could become a boon for tax-preparation firms. The instructions for completing the mandate exemption form run 12 pages, list 19 types of exemptions (with multiple codes), and include worksheets that may require individuals to go to their state exchange’s Web site to find the monthly premiums that will determine whether they had access to “affordable” coverage. (Chris Jacobs, 1/5)

Bloomberg: Whining Harvard Professors Discover Obamacare
"Deplorable, deeply regressive, a sign of the corporatization of the university." That's what Harvard Classics professor Richard F. Thomas calls the changes in Harvard's health plan, which have a large number of the faculty up in arms. Are Harvard professors being forced onto Medicaid? Has their employer denied coverage for cancer treatment? Do they need to sign a corporate loyalty oath in order to access health insurance? Not exactly. But copayments are being raised and deductibles altered, making their plan ... well, actually, their plan is still extraordinarily generous by any standard .... The deepest irony is, of course, that Harvard professors helped to design Obamacare. And Obamacare is the reason that these changes are probably necessary. (Megan McArdle, 1/5)

Dallas Morning News: How To Inject Real Competition Into Health Care
When hospital chains swallow physician practices, it’s time to beware of anti-competitive pricing. Charges at the doctor’s office can suddenly jump to the much higher charges of hospitals. (Jim Landers, 1/5)

Miami Herald: A Sick Situation
Florida’s impoverished children need legislative champions on both sides of the aisle — again. Last week, a federal judge blasted the state of Florida for shortchanging poor and disabled children and the pediatricians who care for them by setting the state’s Medicaid budget at an abysmally and artificially low level for at least 10 years. As a result of the state’s dereliction, many pediatricians across the state dropped out of the program, meaning thousands of children are denied lower-cost preventive medical and dental care. (1/5)

JAMA Internal Medicine: How Narrow A Network Is Too Narrow?
One of the most difficult aspects to evaluate [when choosing a health plan] may be the adequacy of “provider networks” (ie, the specific people and institutions from whom enrollees can get care with full insurance coverage or the lowest copayments offered by their plan). Is there a reasonable choice among primary care clinicians, specialists, and hospitals? There is clearly a big difference to patients between having a “reasonable” number of physicians in the network and having their physician in the network. Compared with other aspects of the plans, the law offers relatively little on which consumers can rely. (Katherine Baicker and Helen Levy, 1/5)

The New York Times: Stop Subsidizing Big Pharma
Robert J. Beall, the president and chief executive of the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, called his recent decision to sell the royalty rights to his organization’s research a “game changer.” Indeed: Deals like this, in which an investment company paid the foundation $3.3 billion for its future royalties from several cystic fibrosis drugs it helped finance, could revolutionize the way medical research is funded. Rather than the staid model of government-funded institutions handing out grants to academic research facilities, a new breed of “venture philanthropies” like the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation could corral private investment into developing lifesaving drugs quickly and cheaply. (Llewellyn Hinkes-Jones, 1/5)

JAMA: FDA Regulation Of Laboratory-Developed Diagnostic Tests
Should the FDA regulate laboratory-developed diagnostic tests? — Yes. ... Laboratory-developed tests exist in a regulatory crevice. Because of its broad statutory authority over products “intended for use in the diagnosis of disease or other conditions,” the FDA considers laboratory-developed tests under its jurisdiction. Yet for many years, the FDA has taken the position that there were too few of these tests, and that they were of sufficiently low risk, to merit oversight. As a result, tests “designed, manufactured, and used within a single laboratory” are not subject to the standards for quality and validity applicable to other diagnostic tests, such as those made by medical device manufacturers. (Joshua Sharfstein, 1/5)

JAMA: Genetic Testing And FDA Regulation
Should the FDA regulate laboratory-developed diagnostic tests? — No. ... In November 2014, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) revealed its intent to regulate thousands of medical diagnostic tests being performed in as many as 11 000 clinical laboratories throughout the United States, focusing especially on genomic medicine. Although the FDA is well intentioned, the current plan for regulation is unnecessary and, if carried out, could result in the closure of many laboratories, undermine innovation, and potentially limit patient choice. Moreover, the proposed regulation, if unchanged, is likely to lead to thousands of laboratory submissions to the FDA, for which its own staffing capacity is tenuous at best. (James P. Evans and Michael S. Watson, 1/5)