One of the elements of the House GOP’s year-end bill is the “doc fix,” which would avoid the current reimbursement schedule for Medicare doctors. If nothing happens, doctors would see a 27% cut in their reimbursement rates, which would undoubtedly cause many to stop seeing Medicare patients. To avoid this, the House GOP bill spends [...]

Paul Waldman’s piece about the differences to be worked out in the House-Senate conference committee on health care is a pretty nice recitation of the issues we’ve been discussing for several weeks. He offers ten specific issues: 1) Funding (House surtax v. Senate “Cadillac” excise tax) 2) The insurance exchange (House nationwide exchange v. Senate [...]

Yesterday a group of freshman Senators unveiled a cost-control package of amendments designed to allay fears that the cost control in the Senate health care bill had been gutted. Economists whose support the White House coveted have grown more wary of the bill because of a de-fanging of the Independent Medicare Advisory Board, which would [...]

I was on a conference call with White House budget director Peter Orszag and Office of Health Reform chief Nancy-Ann DeParle today, and both of them were adamant that the health care reform moving through Congress would cut costs over the long term and “move us into the future of health care,” as Orszag put [...]