Health spending and mandates: What is central to the overhaul's implementation and what is not

CQ looks forward and offer analyses regarding how determinations about mandatory and discretionary spending will impact the health law's implementation. Meanwhile, Modern Healthcare reports on a new study exploring how central the individual insurance mandate is to expanding coverage.

CQ HealthBeat: Health Law Spending: What's Mandatory And What's Not?
With Republicans arriving in force on Capitol Hill next month, sharp scrutiny of spending under the health law will surely follow — with a GOP eye toward blocking whatever can be blocked. So what spending is mandatory and what is discretionary under the law? To the extent spending is discretionary, Republicans will have much more power to block it, given their large majority in the House and their big gains in the Senate (Reichard, 12/22).

Modern Healthcare: Mandate Key To Gains In Coverage: Study
A new analysis of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act finds that if the mandate to buy insurance [was struck] from the law, the projected number of people who would gain coverage would fall by about half (Carlson, 12/22).

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This article was reprinted from kaiserhealthnews.org with permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent news service, is a program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health care policy research organization unaffiliated with Kaiser Permanente.