The House Ways and Means Committee bickered along party lines in a hearing about the need to create a public plan option for the uninsured in legislation to update the nation's health care system. The debate underscored the controversy that continues to surround the public option proposal and the level of difficulty that Congress will have in resolving this and other differences in order to meet Democrats' goal of sending a health care bill to President Obama by the August recess. Read more »
A key Senate chairman firmed up a deadline for getting a health care overhaul bill to the president, promising to have the measure out of committee by June and to President Obama by the summer's end. Read more »
Consumers often complain about the difficulty in getting a doctor's appointment or the frustrations of long waiting room delays before a rushed medical exam, especially in the offices of primary care physicians. Now senators and health care experts are agreeing that the problems are a significant health policy issue that ought to be addressed in health care overhaul legislation. Read more »
It's been a big week for the dryly named "accountable health organizations," the brainchild of perhaps the most influential thinker and health services researcher in health policy circles today. Proposed by Dartmouth College researcher Elliott S. Fisher to begin eliminating unnecessary medical services that analysts like White House budget director Peter R. Orszag say waste $700 billion a year, the organizations got top billing at different meetings by the prestigious Brookings Institution and the closely watched Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC). Read more »
The challenges of paying for a trillion-dollar-plus health care system overhaul like the one that Democrats want to enact this year was never going to be easy. Senators at a Finance Committee hearing made it clear just how hard it would be. Read more »
Three House committee chairmen wrote President Obama promising to move "similar" health care overhaul legislation through their panels—and to do it in a matter of months. Read more »