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The House failed to reach a two-thirds majority for
overriding President Bush's veto of a bill that would renew the State
Children's Health Insurance Program through 2012 at a cost of $60 billion, up
$35 billion over current levels. See vote
California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's ambitious proposal for universal statewide health-care coverage, announced in January, is hanging by a thread as the regular legislative session ends this week. The plan's fate could rest with California voters in a ballot initiative next year. Policy makers around the country have been watching California to see whether a way can be found to extend insurance coverage to all citizens. While Massachusetts did that last year, California has more uninsured residents than any other state, so overhauling its $200 billion health-care industry could be an important national model. See story from Wall Street Journal
A record number of Americans are without health insurance,
according to new U.S. Census Bureau statistics. See story from Health
Day News
On a 47-47 tie vote, the Senate rejected a bid to reduce
conflicts of interest on the Food and Drug Administration advisory panels that
judge the safety of new drugs. The proposed amendment would have limited
participation by experts with financial ties to firms whose drugs are under
review. See vote
Senators voted to negate a measure permitting individuals to
import federally approved prescription drugs from countries such as Canada. The
vote set unattainable certification standards for buying lower-cost
pharmaceuticals from abroad. See vote
The Senate failed to reach the 60 votes needed to advance a
bill requiring the U.S. government to use its purchasing power to achieve lower
prices in the Medicare prescription-drug plan. See vote
The Senate defeated a proposal to require individuals with
incomes over $80,000 and couples above $160,000 to pay higher premiums for the
Medicare prescription-drug program. See vote
The nation's largest seniors' advocacy group on launched a
campaign to urge lawmakers to support legislation that would allow Medicare to
negotiate prescription drug prices. See
story from Cybercast News Service
The message comes from Wal-Mart, but it reflects a view
that's increasingly common in corporate America: The US healthcare system needs
to be fixed. Big business can help, but don't expect us to shoulder the whole
burden. That was a subtext when Wal-Mart chief executive Lee Scott took the
stage last week alongside representatives of a major labor union to kick off a
campaign called "Better Health Care Together." The aim of this
unlikely partnership is to extend coverage to all Americans by 2012, and Mr.
Scott emphasized that the responsibility must be shared by government and
individuals as well as business. See story from
Christian Science Monitor
President Bush's plan to amend the tax code to help provide
health coverage for more Americans is drawing mixed reviews from health experts
who say it moves in the right direction but could one day undermine the
nation's employer-based health insurance system. See
story from McClatchy News Service
Bush's new proposal on health insurance which urges a
tax-code shift to spread private coverage comes at a time where states are
moving in other directions. See story from
Christian Science Monitor
Defying a presidential veto threat, the House approved
legislation directing the government to negotiate with drug companies in an
effort to lower prices for Medicare recipients. See
story from Associated Press See vote
A sweeping plan by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) to
guarantee health insurance for all Californians - including children of illegal
immigrants - is being characterized both as a bold model for improving
healthcare access and as a costly government intrusion that will hurt the
state's economy. See story from
Christian Science Monitor
Middle-income older Americans, like the country's poor, have
"significantly higher" odds of living with a health-related
disability than their wealthy counterparts, according to a new study. See story from MSNBC
According to a new study, Americans are 42 percent more likely than Canadians to have diabetes, 32 percent more likely to have high blood pressure and 12 percent more likely to have arthritis. The authors attribute some of the differences to Canada's universal health care system. See story from Associated Press
America may be the world's superpower, but its survival rate for newborn babies ranks near the bottom among modern nations, better only than Latvia. Among 33 industrialized nations, the United States is tied with Hungary, Malta, Poland and Slovakia with a death rate of nearly 5 per 1,000 babies, according to a new report. Latvia's rate is 6 per 1,000. See story from LiveScience.com
Although wages are going up, so is inflation. See story from Christian Science Monitor
The Senate again rejected a measure that would eliminate the estate tax. See story from CBS News See vote chart
America may be the world's superpower, but its survival rate for newborn babies ranks near the bottom among developed nations. See story from Associated Press
The Medicare prescription drug plan has not had a smooth start. Twenty states opted to continue emergency coverage for some of their low-income residents. Those residents often didn't show up in pharmacists' computers as being enrolled in a plan. The federal government has indicated that these states will be reimbursed. See story from CNN
The Senate rejected an effort by Democrats to give older Americans and the disabled more time to enroll in Medicare's prescription drug benefit. See story from Associated Press
President Bush is moving to put healthcare at the top of America's political agenda by proposing a series of initiatives that are designed to rein in the spiraling cost of healthcare and increase the number of Americans with insurance. To do this, he is hoping to encourage a market-oriented, consumer-driven system. Key components of his plan include the expansion of health savings accounts, additional tax breaks for individuals who buy insurance on their own, and provisions that would improve public access to information on healthcare pricing. See story from Christian Science Monitor
The House voted to approve a bill would reduce discretionary spending by about 1% to $142.5 billion. The bill contains mandatory spending for programs, including Medicaid and Medicare, and "steep cuts" to programs related to medical training, community colleges, rural health care and state and local health departments. Discretionary spending in the version of the bill approved is about $1.5 billion less than last year's allocation, and NIH would receive its smallest funding increase since 1970. See vote
According to officials in the nation's regulatory agencies, the main obstacle to proving or disproving a link between the autism epidemic and the mercury-based preservative, thimerosal, that was contained in childhood vaccines until a few years ago, and is still in flu vaccines, has been the inability to find a large enough group of people who have never been vaccinated to compare with people who have. But an informal survey of the Amish community, where the children are not normally vaccinated, reveals that autism is virtually nonexistent. See story from Mediamonitors.net
A little publicized aspect of the Medicare Modernization Act could have a far-ranging, even revolutionary, effect on how drugs are judged for effectiveness and how they are priced. Under Section 1013 of the act, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) is empowered to research and evaluate drugs. The agency is also charged with widely disseminating that information in layman's language. The bottom line: Drugs that don't work well or that are much more expensive than alternatives are going to begin to stand out. See story from Christian Science Monitor
The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) says 99% of maternal deaths are preventable yet every minute a woman dies from pregnancy-related causes. This loss impacts not only on the family and society, but also on the economy, its latest report says. UNFPA says investment in reproductive health and gender equality could spur growth and sustainable development. See story from BBC
Medicare's plan to fight fraud in its new prescription drug benefit is drawing skepticism from experts who say the benefit is too complex to monitor properly and leaves too much discretion to the industries that have fleeced government health programs in the past. See story from Knight Ridder
When it begins on Jan. 1, 2006, Medicare's new prescription drug benefit will mark a major turning point in the program's 40-year history. Slated to cost more than $720 billion over the next decade, the drug benefit is one of the most generous health offerings in U.S. history and will provide immediate relief and life- saving assistance for millions of elderly and disabled Medicare enrollees who struggle with high prescription drug costs. That help will not come cheaply, however. The benefit will push Medicare drug spending to a projected $70 billion next year and help drive total Medicare spending from roughly $332 billion this year to $425 billion in 2006, according to Medicare actuaries. See story from Knight Ridder
Total U.S. spending on medical research has doubled in the past decade to nearly $95 billion a year, though whether the money is being well spent needs much better scrutiny, a study has found. See story from Associated Press
The average cost of health insurance for a family of four has soared past $10,800 - exceeding the annual income of a minimum-wage earner, according to a new survey released by Kaiser Health Foundation. See Press Release
A federal commission hunting for ways to slow increases in Medicaid's price tag on recommended letting states increase co-payments on some expensive drugs as well as several accounting changes in the program. See story from Associated Press
About 160,000 California workers - farm laborers as well as working-class Latinos employed at hotels, casinos, restaurants and local governments in San Diego and Imperial counties - are getting their annual checkups and having surgeries through health networks south of the border, insurers say. See story from Los Angeles Times
Companies are beginning to offer employees other incentives in lieu of health care benefits. See story from Christian Science Monitor
Canadians have long prized their public healthcare system as a reflection of national values, and have looked askance at the inequities of private medical care in the United States. But now that the Canadian Supreme Court has ruled private health insurers should be allowed to compete with the public system, the future of Canadian healthcare is a question mark. See story from Christian Science Monitor
The extension of taxpayer-funded Medicaid to the working poor has led to the largest expansion of a government entitlement since the Great Society was launched in the 1960s. The soaring costs of Medicaid - which will more than double this year to close to $330 billion since 1999 - is largely due to legislation that extended Medicaid coverage to many Americans who have low- paying jobs. See story from Newsmax.com
Drugmakers cut spending on network TV advertising by 10% in the first quarter from the year before, the sharpest quarterly fall-off in two years. The decline reflects pullbacks in the marketing of some drugs caught in controversy and some makers' reservations about the limits of 60-second TV spots. See story from USA Today
The U.S. health-care system, which relies on insurance provided through employment, restrains productivity and leaves too many people without coverage, but ditching the system would be costly, economists say. See story from Reuters
Officially, about 45 million people in the U.S. go without health insurance, but 16 million people pay for limited coverage that puts them in about the same boat financially and medically as those with no insurance at all, the study found. See story from Reuters
The rate of spending on prescription drugs - a major contributor to the nation's spiraling healthcare costs - is slowing significantly, and that's potentially good news for businesses, states, and individuals struggling with the high cost of health insurance. See story from Christian Science Monitor
A coalition of more than 150 major corporations, unions, healthcare organizations, religious groups, and pension providers representing more than 150 million Americans came together this week to tell Congress that it is the health care system, not Social Security, that desperately needs repair. See story from Christian Science Monitor
In the national debate over what to do about the growing number of working people with little or no health insurance, no other company may be taking more heat than the country's largest employer, Wal-Mart Stores. See story from New York Times
With as many as 950,000 Americans infected with the virus that causes AIDS - and another 40,000 new infections each year - AIDS workers say they are confronting a level of ignorance and misconception reminiscent of the epidemic's earliest days. Despite more than two decades of educational campaigns, there are an estimated quarter-million people in the United States who have the virus but don't know it, many of them in minority communities, which have become the new epicenters of the disease. See story from Los Angeles Times
As the list of prescription drugs raising concern about possible harmful side effects grows, new questions are being asked about the wisdom of inundating consumers with a blizzard of ads for medicines whose safety or effectiveness may later be called into question. See story from Christian Science Monitor
The new Medicare law has touched off a huge battle between insurance companies and drug companies that could determine how many medicines will be readily available to Medicare beneficiaries. See story from New York Times
A 2004 report on the Medicare program shows that a typical 65-year-old can expect to spend 37% of his or her Social Security income on Medicare premiums, co- payments and out-of-pocket expenses in 2006. That share is projected to grow to almost 40% in 2011 and nearly 50% by 2021. See story from USA Today
Health-insurance costs have become a "critical problem" for two-thirds of small businesses in America. While both large and small employers are substantially increasing the percentage of the premium and other out-of- pocket expenses that employees pay, 99 percent of large firms continue to offer insurance, a number that's held steady over the past four years. But the number of small businesses offering insurance has dropped from 68 percent in 2001 to 63 percent today. See story from Christian Science Monitor
Medicare premiums for doctor visits are going up a record $11.60 a month next year. The Bush administration says the increase reflects a strengthened Medicare, while Democrats complain that seniors are being unfairly socked. See story from Associated Press
Health care costs continued to surge this year as family premiums in employer-sponsored plans jumped 11.2 percent, the fourth year of double-digit growth, according to a new study. The cumulative effect of rising health care costs is taking a toll on workers: There are at least 5 million fewer jobs providing health insurance in 2004 than there were in 2001, according to the survey of 3,017 companies by the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Health Research and Educational Trust. See story from Associated Press
The relentless rise in the cost of employee health insurance has become a significant factor in the employment slump, as the labor market adds only a trickle of new jobs each month despite nearly three years of uninterrupted economic growth. See synopsis of New York Times story in San Francisco Chronicle
Medicare officials proposed cutting payments to doctors for widely used medicines to treat cancer and lung disease by as much as 89 percent for some drugs next year. See story from Reuters
Patients lacking health insurance are flooding U.S. emergency rooms, many seeking routine care that they should get elsewhere, a group representing government-funded clinics reported. See story from Reuters
Nearly 82 million people -- one third of the U.S. population younger than 65 -- lacked health insurance at some point over the past two years and most of those were uninsured for more than nine months, says a study by the private group Families USA. See story from Associated Press
Leading Republicans said that Congress is unlikely to pass patient rights legislation this year, despite lawmakers' pledges to revive it following a Supreme Court ruling limiting lawsuits against HMOs. See story from Associated Press
An internal investigation by the Department of Health and Human Services confirms that the top Medicare official threatened to fire the program's chief actuary if he told Congress that drug benefits would probably cost much more than the White House acknowledged See story from New York Times
The pace of growth in medical costs eased significantly in 2003, but still bounded well ahead of economic expansion. A sharp slowdown in prescription drug spending growth offset by a steep rise in hospital prices fueled a jump in underlying medical costs of 7.4 percent, well below the 9.6 percent rise recorded in 2002. See story from Reuters See charts
With neither Presidential candidate talking about radical reform or pushing to put the system on a whole new track, the momentum for health care reform has switched to the states. Their solutions could prove significant, observers say. They could help swing the national debate by showing what can be done - programmatically and politically. See story from Christian Science Monitor
To slow the rising cost of health coverage, 50 of the country's largest employers are creating a buyers' club to bargain directly with drug makers. See story from New York Times
People who set aside salary in tax-free accounts for health bills could shift unused funds into the next year or long-term health savings accounts under legislation approved by the House. See story from Associated Press See vote
The rollout of discount cards for prescription drugs, the first phase of the Medicare drug benefit recently passed by Congress, had created confusion. See story from Christian Science Monitor
Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) are the latest method for controlling healthcare costs and represent a kind of 401(k) for healthcare expenses. See story from Christian Science Monitor
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