THE DAILY DOSE: WEDNESDAY, JUNE 10, 2009

Under the Microscope

BILL DRAFT: "Affordable Health Choices Act"
Yesterday, the Senate’s Health Education Labor and Pensions Committee dropped its health care reform bill.
Read the Senate Committee’s Press Release here.

Read descriptions of Senator Kennedy’s health care reform bill in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Hill,
The New Republic, CQ Today, Roll Call, Politico, USA Today, and The Wall Street Journal. GOP reaction was covered in
CQ Today and the L.A. Times.

Health Care Headlines

• Romer Says Health Care Changes Crucial
  Slowing the rise in health care costs while covering the uninsured is not only possible but necessary, one of President Obama's key economic advisers said Monday in San Francisco. [San Francisco Gate, 6/9/2009]
• A Healthcare Reform Bill Will Affect Nearly Everyone
  Spurred on by President Obama and an array of businesses, medical providers and consumers clamoring for change, congressional Democrats have begun to lay out specific plans for overhauling the nation's healthcare system -- proposing changes that would affect almost every American, old or young, sick or well, rich, poor or middle-class. [L.A. Times, 6/10/2009]
• House Dems Show First Draft of Health Reform Bill
  House Democratic leaders gave members their first glimpse of their version of President Obama’s healthcare overhaul on Tuesday, with liberals leaving the meeting happy and centrist Democrats walking away skeptical.
  [The Hill 6/09/09]
• Dems Double Down on Health Care
  House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer are double-teaming powerful chairmen and rank-and-file members to save health care reform from a repeat of the Democratic Party infighting that helped kill it in 1994. [Politico, 6/10/2009]
• On Health Care, Congress Must Navigate Tricky Political Terrain
  The new president stood before a joint session of Congress and called for health-care reform in the most urgent terms possible. Less than two years later, "Hillarycare" would become mired on Capitol Hill and would help to send Democrats to a historic 1994 election defeat.
  [Washington Post, 6/10/2009]
• Republicans Connect Government-Run Insurance to Rationing of Care
  Republicans on Capitol Hill have found their voice on health care: Attack the idea of a government-run “public plan” insurance option, insist Democrats’ support for it will lead to rationing and denial of care, then repeat. [CQ Today, 6/9/2009]
• Tax On Health Benefits Weighed
  A Senate plan to overhaul the nation's health system is likely to include a new tax on some employer-provided health benefits that exceed the value of the basic plan offered to federal employees, currently about $13,000 a year for a family of four, the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee said yesterday. [Washington Post, 6/10/2009]
• Kennedy May Not Return This Month
  Sen. Edward Kennedy is undergoing a new round of chemotherapy, and lawmakers expect the Massachusetts Democrat will not be able to return for this month’s debate on the healthcare overhaul that bears his name. [The Hill, 6/9/2009]
• Hospitals Put the Squeeze on Infection-Prevention Efforts
  Deadly hospital infections cause almost 10,000 deaths a year and add more than $20 billion to the nation’s health-care tab. [Wall Street Journal, 6/9/2009]
• Groups Release Priorities for Health Care Overhaul Bill
  Leaders from business, labor and health care provider communities announced Tuesday a list of health care priorities that members say are nonpartisan, common sense goals for any overhaul legislation.
  [CQ Today, 6/9/2009]
• Focus Should be on Cost-Effectiveness of Chronic Disease Prevention Programs, Experts Say
  Lawmakers and health experts questioning the cost-saving potential of prevention programs for chronic disease are not focusing on right issue, three physicians said at a health policy conference this week sponsored by the Center for Studying Health System Change. [CQ Today, 6/9/2009]
• Health Care Reform Moves Ahead in Capital
  The mammoth task of reforming the U. S. health care system took steps forward Tuesday on Capitol Hill and at the White House, and Rep. Brian Higgins and Michael W. Cropp, president of Independent Health, got a close-up view. [Buffalo News, 6/10/2009]
• EDITORIAL: What 'Access' Really Means
  Public health officials have long recognized - and tried to eliminate - the sharp disparities in health among racial and ethnic minorities. But there is another group as well that ranks well below average on many measures of health: people with disabilities. [Boston Globe, 6/9/2009]
• OPINION: Fixing Health Care Starts With the Doctors
  By Steve Pearlstein
  If we really want to fix America's overpriced and under-performing health-care system, what really matters is changing the ways doctors practice medicine, individually and collectively. Everything else -- mandate or no mandate, the tax treatment of health benefits, whether there's a "public plan" to compete against private health insurers -- is just tinkering at the margin. [Washington Post, 6/10/2009]