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House Democrats to open hearings amid controversy over finances, public plan

"House Democrats are pushing forward with a partisan health care bill even as a key Senate Democrat labors to achieve an elusive bipartisan compromise on President Barack Obama's top legislative priority," The Associated Press reports.

23 Jun 2009

Lawmakers look for new taxes, cuts to pay reform bill

Lawmakers are considering deductions on medical expenses, value-added taxes, spending cuts and other options to foot the reform bill.

23 Jun 2009

Dodd stretched thin on finance and health roles

Critics are saying that Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., cannot handle his role in financial regulatory reform while he sits in for ailing Sen. Edward Kennedy on the House's health committee, Politico reports.

23 Jun 2009

Senators debate public plan, co-ops for health overhaul

Senators crafting health reform legislation are debating a number of issues ahead of the revelation of proposal including the inclusion of a cooperative as an alternative to a government-run public plan, Politico reports.

23 Jun 2009

Obama team ready to start health reform rally

The White House launches a media blitz this week to coincide with the shrinking timeline for getting a health reform package passed in the Senate, Roll Call reports.

23 Jun 2009

Insurance industry groups lay down reform marker

America's Health Insurance Plans and the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association, the two largest insurance industry groups, released a letter today that "laid down a marker on health care, warning in stark terms that a proposed government insurance plan would dismantle the employer coverage Americans have relied on for a half century and overtake the system," the Associated Press reports.

23 Jun 2009

Obama 'very optimistic' about health care overhaul, public plan 'makes sense'

President Barack Obama today at a news conference said a public plan is "an important tool to discipline insurance companies," but he didn't answer a question on whether he would veto a bill that did not include a public plan option, saying it was too early in the process to "draw lines in the sand," Reuters reports.

23 Jun 2009

The emotional cost of nursing

What are the costs of caring? A new project in the School of Psychology explores nurses' experience of distress and aims to determine if empathy with patients is associated with traumatic experience in nurses.

23 Jun 2009

Lawmakers address nurse and primary care physician shortages

A pending House bill would aim to address the nursing shortage by allowing "20,000 additional nurses to enter the U.S. each year for the next three years as a temporary measure to fill the gap," Business Week reports.

22 Jun 2009

Parents struggle with costs of their children's autism care

The total cost for treating a child with autism can reach $5 million, but insurance companies rarely cover autism therapy and few states mandate it. CBS News reports that "an estimated one in every 150 children in America has autism and the number of reported cases is growing" while "parents are increasingly demanding that insurance companies cover the newest treatment."

22 Jun 2009

Adverts highlight different aspects of health reform debate

A coalition of union and liberal groups began running television ads designed to get "the attention of one particular television viewer: Sen. Kay Hagan," The Greensboro (N.C.) News & Record reports.

22 Jun 2009

As Obama wades into health debate, tough choices await

"As the legislative debate over health care intensifies on Capitol Hill, there is growing clamor for President Obama to step in," the Washington Post reports.

22 Jun 2009

House Democrats push their health reform plan

House Democrats' health care bill draft released Friday is likely to survive relatively intact, "including a robust new Medicare-like public health plan that would compete with private companies in a national health insurance exchange," Roll Call reports.

22 Jun 2009

Insurers revoke plans to avoid paying for patients with high costs

A Congressional committee recently turned its attention to rescission, a practice where insurers retroactively revoke plans to avoid paying high costs. NPR reports: "According to a new report by congressional investigators, an insurance company practice of retroactively canceling health insurance is fairly common, and it saves insurers a lot of money.

22 Jun 2009

At VA hospital, a rogue cancer unit

The New York Times reports that a "rogue cancer unit" at a veteran's hospital in Philadelphia "operated with virtually no outside scrutiny and botched 92 of 116 [prostate] cancer treatments over a span of more than six years - and then kept quiet about it, according to interviews with investigators, government officials and public records."

22 Jun 2009

Sticker shock threatens to stall health care overhaul

"No one can figure out a politically acceptable way to pay for an overhaul of America's health care system, and until someone does, the effort is stalled. Maybe indefinitely," McClatchy reports. Michael Tanner, a "health care analyst" at the Cato Institute, says "it's quite feasible that the whole thing could crash and burn because of sticker shock."

22 Jun 2009

Can health co-ops do the job of a public plan?

"Perhaps the clearest sign yet of the unpredictable nature of… an ambitious [health care] policy overhaul is the approach that is suddenly starting to emerge on Capitol Hill as an alternative to a public plan - non-profit, consumer run health insurance cooperatives," Time reports.

22 Jun 2009

Polls show Americans struggling to pay for health care

A new study reports that about one-fourth of Americans say they've struggled in the last 12 months to pay for health care, Reuters reports.

22 Jun 2009

Obama, AARP announce agreement to cut prescription drug costs

On Monday, President Barack Obama joined with AARP chief Barry Rand to announce "an agreement among pharmaceutical companies to cut prescription drug costs for seniors - and inject some energy into his efforts at comprehensive health care reform," Politico reports. Obama said the companies' goal is to "to reduce the punishing inflation in health care while improving patient care."

22 Jun 2009

House Democrats release sweeping reform plan

Democrats in the House of Representatives unveiled their bill to overhaul the U.S. health care system today. Senior Correspondent Mary Agnes Carey was there and spoke with Peggy Girshman, KHN's Executive Editor for Online, about the plan.

21 Jun 2009