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Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report Feature Highlights Recent Blog Entries
"Blog Watch" offers readers a roundup of health policy-related blog posts.Appropriately, the last of the Senate Finance Committee"s three major public roundtables on health reform issues was on finance. Keith Hennessy lauds economist Kate Baicker"s testimony (.pdf) and says it helps connect reform ideas to a system of third-party payment. Hennessy says the current system leads people to "spend more of other people"s money than they do of their own, and less wisely." Hennessy explores the example of employer-sponsored insurance, which he says makes health insurance appear less expensive to employees than it is.Meanwhile, the New Republic"s Jonathan Cohn, who has been calling attention to potential ways of financing the significant cost of reform, recommends the testimony of Center on Budget and Policy Priorities President Robert Greenstein. Greenstein testified that there are no "painless" ways of raising money for reform, and said, "This leads to my first recommendation, in the form of a plea to the Committee. Please do not take any offset options off the table at this time. I believe you ultimately will need to put together a package that contains an array of spending and revenue offsets." Offsets could include removing or limiting the tax exclusion for employer-sponsored insurance. Bob Lazsewski strenuously disagrees. He illustrates a post titled "Paying for a Big Part of Health Care Reform With New Taxes Would Be a Terrible Mistake!" with a graph of the trends in health insurance premiums over the last 20 years and says, "paying for most of health care reform by raising taxes would be nothing less than cowardly and fiscally irresponsible." He continues, "the Congress is so desperate to find money and so unwilling to anger any powerful health care special interests we better get ready for some interesting rationalizations to promote tax increases in the place of fundamental reforms."After the hearing, ranking member Sen. Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.) gave a presentation at the Heritage Foundation on his preferences for bipartisan reform legislation and the Foundry"s Marguerite Higgins blogged Enzi"s key points. She says the senator wants to increase affordability, use private plans for coverage and ensure a bill is fully paid for.The White House appears to be initiating additional outreach efforts to mobilize support. Jose Antonio Vargas of the Washington Post"s Daily Dose reports that President Obama"s administration chose to send its first WhiteHouse.gov e-mail on health reform Wednesday. Vargas says, "It"s only fitting that Obama"s first official e-mail from the White House is about health care reform. As early as December, the incoming Obama administration began using new media tools to build grassroots support around the issue."Interesting elsewhere:
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International Panel Of Experts Reaches Consensus On Diagnosis And Treatment Of Bleeding Disorders In Women
Because bleeding from the reproductive tract is a naturally occurring event during menstruation and childbirth, women who exhibit menorrhagia, or excessive bleeding after their menstrual cycle, may have underlying diseases that are underdiagnosed. In order to address important issues related to the diagnosis and management of reproductive tract bleeding in women with bleeding disorders, a consensus conference was convened. Results are published in the July 2009 issue of the American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology.
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Reform Bill Details Emerge, Lobbyists Gear Up For Fight

Industry groups reacted "warily" this weekend to a draft of the Senate HELP (Health, Education, Labor and Pensions) Committee"s health overhaul plan. The first details emerged late Friday and lobbyists began speaking up, USA Today reports: - National Association of Manufacturers: "We"re trying hard," according to a spokesman, to remove a provision from the draft legislation that would penalize employers who don"t provide insurance. - U.S. Chamber of Commerce: "The biggest sticking points will be the so-called public option and the employer mandate," a spokesman said (Fritze, 6/8). - America"s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP): "There"s both a social and economic reason to get everybody in the healthcare system," a spokesman said. The group opposes the public option, but sees individual mandates to buy insurance as "a huge booster," the LA Times reports (Girion, 6/7). - American Medical Association: "If you"re concentrating on the end goals of getting affordable health insurance for everyone, it can probably be achieved by market reforms," AMA President Nancy Nielsen said, Bloomberg reports, in a pre-emptive strike against the then-expected public plan before details of the proposal were released Friday (Nussbaum, 6/5). As the urgency of these groups" interests increase, they have fewer tools at their disposal than in past years, thanks to tighter restrictions such as a "ban on gifts to lawmakers and limits on campaign contributions," USA Today reports in a separate article. However, lobbyists have no restrictions on spending money to "honor" lawmakers, such as Sen. Edward Kennedy, who leads the HELP committee. "Health insurers and hospitalsò€¦ are donating millions to help build an institute in Boston to celebrate the career of Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., who is attempting to overhaul the nation"s health care system," USA Today reports (Schouten and Overberg, 6/8). Meanwhile, Democrats seeking support for their sweeping overhaul plan are mobilizing their own lobbyists, "suburban housewives and social workers mixed with Baptists ministers, college students, retirees," Reuters reports, describing the broad membership of the Democratic National Committee"s "Organizing for America" political operation, led by President Obama"s former campaign manager. Obama"s political machine is gearing up for a "vicious fight," one activist told Reuters. "The insurance companies and healthcare companies are gearing up to oppose this. We"ve got to get our voices heard," he said (Gillam, 6/8). This information was reprinted from kaiserhealthnews.org with kind permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. You can view the entire Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report, search the archives and sign up for email delivery at kaiserhealthnews.org. © Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. All rights reserved.


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