Think Tank Releases New Health Care Framework
A new report proposes a fail-safe mechanism to ensure that any health care overhaul wouldn’t add to the federal deficit.
All Coverage
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A Painless Way To Hold Down Health Costs?
Some experts think incentives will encourage doctors to deliver quality care with fewer resources.
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Opinion Column
Is President Obama Fighting The Last War?
You can sum up Obama’s strategy for health reform as “WWCD”: What Wouldn’t the Clintons Do. And it’s working well so far. It seems likely that Obama will have a bill to sign by year’s end. But will it be legislation that people actually like?
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Special Health IT Report: Electronic Prescribing Increasing Despite Glitches
Advocates say e-prescribing is a key advance toward health care’s digital future because of its potential to reduce medical errors, cut drug costs and save doctors and patients time and money. But kinks need to be worked out to spur more rapid acceptance.
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Lobbyists Jockey For Position In Health Care Debate
Earlier this month, lobbyists trooped in to watch as the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions began working on a health-care overhaul – the first congressional panel this year to move so far.
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Health Reform’s Benefits for Middle Class Under Scrutiny
As President Obama tries to sell the middle class on health reform, Congress is considering proposals that would affect how individuals benefit. Lower-income people would benefit most in the near term from insurance subsidies. But Obama is emphasizing measures he says would help the middle class by reining in the rising cost of health care and insurance over the long term.
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Opinion Column
Reading the Fine Print on Health Reform: Encouraging News For Public Health
Partisan health reform fights have focused on a handful of concerns: the proposed public health insurance plan, individual and employer mandates, financing measures to subsidize low-income Americans and to cover the uninsured. As a combatant in some of these fights, I’m not one to say the partisan conflict is misplaced.
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Opinion Column
Bringing the Prius to American Medicine
President Obama has repeatedly promised that providing every American affordable access to quality health care won’t cost more money than we’ll save through reform, but he’s recently raised the stakes even further. Health care reform, he has said, would “foster economic growth” and “unleash America’s economic potential.”
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Analysis: Why Health Care Reformers Are Wooing Skeptical Seniors
The over-65 crowd, with its outsized political clout, will have a big say in the fate of any health overhaul. And that helps explain a recent agreement on drug discounts involving the pharmaceutical industry, the White House and Congress.
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President Obama’s Remarks On Health Care During June 23 Press Conference
In an afternoon news conference, President Barack Obama pushed hard for a government-run public insurance plan, but indicated it’s not a make-or-break requirement for health overhaul legislation. These video excerpts are courtesy of C-SPAN.
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The $64,000 Question: Can Health Care Be Paid For Without Breaking the Bank?
Democrats in Congress, surprised by the high cost estimates for their health care proposals, are looking at a wide range of options for raising money and reducing costs. Some of the revenue raisers have been rejected in previous years, but now all ideas are on the table because of the big amounts needed to pay for a health care overhaul.
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Health On The Hill — June 22, 2009
Kaiser Health News’ Mary Agnes Carey discusses recent and upcoming activities on the Hill — part of a weekly series of video reports.
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Opinion Column
Boosting Home Care: An Uphill Battle
Once a senior begins receiving long-term care services, she and her family often are in for two shocks. The first is that Medicare won’t pay beyond perhaps a few months after a hospitalization. The second is that while Medicaid, the state-federal program for the poor, may help, chances are it will only do so for nursing home residents.
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Doctors Say Electronic Data-Sharing Is Saving Lives, Money
Memphis, Tenn., is one of a growing number of areas with a successful high-tech health information exchange, which proponents say saves lives and money. But the system now faces a crucial test: what happens when the initial funding runs out?
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House Democrats Release Sweeping Reform Plan
The Democratic members of three House committees today released a plan they said would lower health care costs and improve health care choices. They plan includes individual as well as employer mandates to buy insurance and would provide for a government-run public plan alternative to private insurance.
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HELP: A Sampler of Amendments
The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee continues to plow through hundreds of amendments as it works on its health overhaul bill. Here’s a short selection of amendments, which show a wide range of interests and concerns, and are pending unless otherwise marked.
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Is “Public Option” a Practical Fix or Partisan Poison?
The Web site Politics Daily asked two experts to debate perhaps the hottest topic in health reform: Whether to create a government-run insurance plan to compete with private insurance plans. The debaters on the so-called “public option” are Richard Kirsch, national campaign manager for Health Care for America Now and James Gelfand, senior manager of health policy for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
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T-Word Looms Large In Health Care Cost Debate
Everybody knew that a complete overhaul of the nation’s health care system was going to be an expensive undertaking.
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Opinion Column
The Federal Government Should Have Limited, But Crucial, Role In Comp Effectiveness
The government shoudn’t be the arbiter that makes final decisions on the value of one treatment over another, but can play an important role in collecting and disseminating information about the most effective treatments.
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Opinion Column
Health Reform: The Reality Show
The health care reform discussion is beginning-at last!-to get real. On June 9, the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee released a draft bill, and the Congressional Budget Office published an estimate that the bill would cost $1 trillion over 10 years and leave 35 million uninsured.
