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Our newsletter features a commentary by Grace-Marie Turner on the major developments and issues of the week as well as summaries of writings by participants in the Health Policy Consensus Group and other articles of interest from the health policy world, plus announcements of coming events. It is emailed in an HTML format from the galen@galen.org email address, via Constant Contact, and you may have to adjust your email settings and junk mailbox to ensure that you don’t miss an issue.

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July 21, 2009

The biggest news is the letter sent to Congress by 13 of the nation's leading health care delivery systems, including the Mayo Clinic. President Obama has traveled throughout the country extolling the virtues of these integrated care delivery systems, saying that they deliver better value at lower costs and should be a model for the rest of the nation. The problem is, the legislation that already has passed two committees in the House could put them out of business.





July 17, 2009
The White House and Democratic leaders appear undaunted in their efforts to push sweeping health reform legislation through Congress in record time, even as the head of the Congressional Budget Office told Congress yesterday that the bills would worsen the federal government's "already bleak budget outlook," increase the deficit, and drive the nation more deeply into debt. Yikes! But worse still, he said the bills won't meet the president's promise of reducing health costs over the long term.



July 9, 2009
White House and congressional leaders continue to work feverishly on a sweeping overhaul of one-sixth of our economy, but their efforts hit a number of road blocks this week, putting their rapid timetable and even passage of major health reform legislation in jeopardy. The week started with White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel signaling that President Obama would be willing to negotiate over creation of a government-run health insurance plan. Mr. Emanuel said one of several ways to meet the president's goals would be to have a public plan as a fallback if the marketplace fails to provide sufficient competition on its own.



June 26, 2009
ABC News anchor Charlie Gibson shook his head after Wednesday night's broadcast from the White House, frustrated he had not been able to draw out more details from President Obama about the sweeping health reform plan that he is pushing. Gibson, as well as the doctors, patients, businesspeople, and others in the audience, posed some tough questions. But most of the president's answers came from his standard talking points and went unchallenged. He spoke for 45 minutes of the 75 minutes of actual airtime.




June 19, 2009
The Congressional Budget Office told the Senate health committee its bill would cost $1 trillion over the next 10 years and would only provide health insurance for a net 16 million more people. It said 15 million would lose their coverage at work and eight million would lose coverage from other sources, leaving 36 million uninsured. Since the goal is to have virtually everyone covered with no deficit spending, this was a double whammy, especially since there is even more spending in the bill that the CBO hasn't yet scored.




June 12, 2009
The first Democratic bill in the hopper this week came from Sen. Kennedy's Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, taking 615-pages to turn most of whatever is left of our private health sector over to government. The normally-genteel Sen. Orrin Hatch was quoted in The New York Times this morning as calling the bill "the most liberal bunch of gobbledygook I've seen in my life -- a complete liberal mishmash of ideas." Keith Hennessey, director of the National Economic Council under President Bush, was the first to present a detailed analysis, which you can find here.



June 5, 2009
Rep. Paul Ryan spoke at a day-long conference at the American Enterprise Institute yesterday, warning that a public plan option is becoming the linchpin in the health reform debate. He said that a health reform bill creating a new government health insurance plan will be approved by the House "no two ways about that" and that the provision likely will be included in the Senate bill as well.



May 22, 2009
Four Republican members of Congress shook up the health reform debate this week when they were the first to reach the floor of the House and Senate with comprehensive health reform legislation. The Patients' Choice Act puts the $300-billion tax break for employment-based health insurance front and center in the debate. Reps. Paul Ryan and Devin Nunes and Sens. Tom Coburn and Richard Burr use it to create generous refundable tax credits for Americans to buy health insurance ($2,300 for individuals and $5,700 for families).




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