The fiscal 2010 budget proposal released by the Obama administration recaps the Medicare cuts it proposed earlier this year to pay for a health overhaul, but offers new details on efforts to fight fraud and how it might reduce the cost of legislation erasing deep scheduled Medicare cuts in payments to doctors. Read more »
Republicans on the Senate Finance Committee expressed deep skepticism about a public plan option as part of the health care overhaul, pressing witnesses at a roundtable hearing on how such a plan would work without holding an advantage over competing private insurance plans. Read more »
HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius offered a relaxed defense of — what else? — the "public plan" option in her debut before the House Ways and Means Committee, portraying it as par for the course in many states around the country, not some exotic new structure that would gobble up the private insurance market. Read more »
Although Congress has been holding plenty of hearings on overhauling the nation's health care system, the timetable for action on the issue outlined by key lawmakers has left little time if any for public hearings on whatever plan they develop. But House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry A. Waxman told a health care conference that he does intend to hold hearings on the approach being developed by three committees in his legislative chamber. Read more »
Following reports released by the Department of Health and Human Services indicating that patient safety measures have worsened, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius this week challenged hospitals to reduce the number of health care associated infections in their facilities, according to an HHS news release. Read more »
The new appointee in charge of overseeing the federal effort to foster national adoption of health information technology announced the names of new advisers to help guide the effort and a timetable for some of its early moves in the field. Read more »