Virginia Senate bills say no to requiring health insurance

By Rosalind S. Helderman

Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, February 2, 2010

RICHMOND -- Virginia's Democratic-controlled state Senate passed measures Monday that would make it illegal to require individuals to purchase health insurance, a direct challenge to the party's efforts in Washington to reform health care.

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Obama says he's not giving up on health reform

Health Official Can’t Guarantee Openness in Talks

By ROBERT PEAR

Published: February 3, 2010

WASHINGTON — Kathleen Sebelius, the secretary of health and human services, told Congress on Wednesday that she could not guarantee greater openness in negotiations over legislation to remake the nation’s health care system.

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Newfoundland Premier Going to U.S. for Heart Surgery

By CBC News

Newfoundland and Labrador Premier Danny Williams is set to undergo heart surgery this week in the United States.
CBC News confirmed Monday that Williams, 60, left the province earlier in the day and will have surgery later in the week.

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U.N.'s Global Warming Report Under Fresh Attack for Rainforest Claims

By Gene J. Koprowski

 - FOXNews.com

A United Nations report on climate change that has been lambasted for its faulty research is under new attack for yet another instance of what critics say is sloppy science -- guiding global warming policy based on a study of forest fires.

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Denmark Leads the Way in Digital Care

Sindya N. Bhanoo/The New York Times

VIRTUAL VISIT Jens Danstrup, 77, takes his own medical readings at home and sends them over the Internet to his doctor in Copenhagen.

By SINDYA N. BHANOO

Published: January 11, 2010

COPENHAGEN — Jens Danstrup, a 77-year-old retired architect, used to bike all around town. But years of smoking have weakened his lungs, and these days he finds it difficult to walk down his front steps and hail a taxi for a doctor’s appointment.

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Sindya N. Bhanoo/The New York Times

Mr. Danstrup, who finds it difficult to walk down his front steps, can go to the doctor without leaving home, using some simple medical devices and a notebook computer with a Web camera.

Now, however, he can go to the doctor without leaving home, using some simple medical devices and a notebook computer with a Web camera. He takes his own weekly medical readings, which are sent to his doctor via a Bluetooth connection and automatically logged into an electronic record.

“You see how easy it is for me?” Mr. Danstrup said, sitting at his desk while video chatting with his nurse at Frederiksberg University Hospital, a mile away. “Instead of wasting the day at the hospital?”

He clipped an electronic pulse reader to his finger. It logged his reading and sent it to his doctor. Mr. Danstrup can also look up his personal health record online. His prescriptions are paperless — his doctors enters them electronically, and any pharmacy in the country can pull them up. Any time he wants to get in touch with his primary care doctor, he sends an e-mail message.

All of this is possible because Mr. Danstrup lives in Denmark, a country that began embracing electronic health records and other health care information technology a decade ago.

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Prescription costs vary widely

Comparison shopping worth effort, even for those with insurance

By Lucy Soto

For the AJC

More of us are cruising the coupon section, comparing prices at the grocery store and skipping the extras, but many consumers are missing out on big savings for a critical necessity — prescription drugs.

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The direct health care costs of Americans with diabetes will almost triple between now and 2034.

Obesity is one of the biggest epidemics facing the U.S. today. Sadly the conditions and diseases that occur as a result of obesity can ultimately be deadly to its victims and, from a financial standpoint, debilitating to our economy. Washington's "revolutionary" health care reform is doing nothing to stop the escalating costs and rising mortality.

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'Smart pills' herald new direction for drug companies

Intelligent pills, or "smart pills," are medicines that can talk to doctors, and they herald a new direction for pharmaceutical companies.

By THE ECONOMIST

Last update: January 18, 2010 - 4:19 PM

Novartis, a Swiss pharmaceuticals giant, is involved in two deals at the moment. Its $50 billion takeover of Alcon, an American eye-care firm, unveiled early this month, has been hogging the headlines.

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Americans Spoke, and It’s Time to Hit the Reset Button on Health Care Reform

Posted January 19th, 2010 at 10:00pm in Ongoing Priorities with 16 comments Print This Post

Scott Brown’s remarkable victory in the Massachusetts Senate election speaks loud and clear: Americans across the political spectrum are unhappy with the scale and cost of the congressional health reform legislation, and the lack of transparency in the process.
Congress would be wise to see this outcome as a referendum on health care reform. The proper conclusion?

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Health Care in the Balance as Ground Shifts Under Obama

Posted January 19th, 2010 at 9:30am in Health Care, Ongoing Priorities with 29 comments Print This Post

One year ago, President Barack Obama delivered his inaugural address at the foot of the Capitol, laid out an agenda of “big plans” for his administration, and chided “cynics” who “fail to understand that the ground has shifted beneath them.” One year later, as voters head to the ballot box in Massachusetts, it seems that the ground very well may have shifted under President Obama.
And that ground shift might spell trouble for the President’s health care magnum opus.

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More Taxpayer Funding of Abortion in the Senate Health Bill

The Nelson-Reid agreement on abortion is not the only source of taxpayer funding for abortion. An obscure addition to the Senate version of health care reform that was adopted on Christmas Eve is a gift package with unexpected contents: even more taxpayer funding of elective abortions. According to a new analysis just released by National Right to Life Committee legislative director Doug Johnson, Sec. 10503 of the Reid “Manager’s Amendment” to H.R. 3590 directly appropriates funds for community health centers (CHCs). These funds would not be covered by the annual abortion funding limitation known as the Hyde Amendment or by any other existing limitation.


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Actuary Still Sees Increase in Health Spending

By DAVID M. HERSZENHORN

In a new analysis, the chief actuary of the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services found that the Senate version of major health care legislation would increase total national health spending from 2010 to 2019 by $222.3 billion, or 0.6 percent, more than projected under current law.

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30 Years of Global Cooling Are Coming, Leading Scientist Says

FOXNews.com

From Miami to Maine, Savannah to Seattle, America is caught in an icy grip that one of the U.N.'s top global warming proponents says could mark the beginning of a mini ice age.
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Beware a Public Health Plan in Private Disguise

Posted January 6th, 2010 at 12.34pm in Health Care.

In the ongoing attempts of Congress to find an alternative to the “public plan” in health reform, the Senate bill includes a provision to give the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), which oversees the Federal Employee Health Benefit Program (FEHBP) a new role: sponsoring health plans to compete against private health plans in every state in the nation.

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Obama’s Other Broken Health Care Promises

When Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) emerged from a closed-door meeting with top House Democratic leaders yesterday, the press asked her about C-SPAN CEO Brian Lamb’s request that she permit cameras to televise the final health care negotiations between the House and Senate. After Pelosi first demurred, a reporter reminded Pelosi about President Barack Obama’s frequent promises to the American people throughout 2008 that he would ensure C-SPAN was allowed to televise exactly such negotiations, to which Speaker Pelosi quipped: “There are a number of things he was for on the campaign trail.”

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A Sham Of A Process For A Sham Of A Bill

Posted January 5th, 2010 at 9.34am in Health Care.

Speaking at a town hall meeting on August 21, 2008, in Chester, Virginia, then-candidate Barack Obama promised the American people: “I’m going to have all the negotiations around a big table. We’ll have doctors and nurses and hospital administrators. Insurance companies, drug companies … what we will do is, we’ll have the negotiations televised on C-SPAN, so that people can see who is making arguments on behalf of their constituents … And so, that approach, I think is what is going to allow people to stay involved in this process.” The participants around Obama’s fictional big table may have changed depending on where he was speaking, but throughout his campaign the essential promise was always there: “negotiations televised on C-SPAN.”

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Coloradoans working to block federal health-care reform

By Katie Redding 12/30/09 11:53 AM

The libertarian-leaning Independence Institute is already at work on a state constitutional amendment that would block some of the proposed federal health care reforms, reports Jessica Fender at the The Denver Post.

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Beyond the Constitution: The Healthcare Bill Violates the Rule of Law

• Posted December 23rd, 2009 at 2.03pm in Health Care.

Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC) has pointed observers to a problematic section of the health care legislation now before the Senate that proposes (in Section 3403) to create an Independent Medicare Advisory Board. He rightly observes that the bill language makes it virtually impossible to repeal that part of the legislation, thereby attempting to bind future Congresses.

DeMint is right about all this, but—having read through the legislation—by my read it is actually much worse than has been suggested, and much more destructive of the rule of law and democratic governance.

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WATCH THE VIDEO!

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Audit Says State Wasted $92 Million on Medicaid

By NICHOLAS CONFESSORE

Published: December 22, 2009

New York’s Medicaid system, the state’s largest single expense, lost at least $92 million to improper payments, billing errors and poor recordkeeping during the last five years, according to several audits released Tuesday by State Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli.

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