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Category: Health/Medical

Senate Finance Committee Releases Options to Improve Patient Care and Reduce Costs

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Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-MT) and Ranking Member Chuck Grassley (R-IA) have released a set of policy options for transforming the health care delivery system to improve patient care and reduce health care costs.

Among other options, their proposals would:

  • Establish a Medicare value-based purchasing program for hospitals and begin to pay hospitals for their actual performance on quality measures beginning in 2013;
  • Reduce payments to hospitals with high readmission rates for certain conditions;
  • Bundle payments for hospital and post-acute care services within 30 days of hospital discharge;
  • Redistribute unused graduate medical education slots to increase access to primary care; and
  • Ban physician self-referral to a hospital in which the physician has an ownership interest, subject to certain requirements.

Senate Finance Committee Policy Options

Conflict of Interest Rules Proposed for Medical Research

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A recent report from the Institute of Medicine recommends that researchers and medical faculty members decline all gifts from medical companies and refuse to publish or present material that is ghostwritten for such companies in order to avoid real or perceive conflicts of interest.   The recommendations also suggest broader reporting requirements of researchers’ ties to companies, but does not go so far as to recommend barring all such ties.  Instead, the report suggests that researchers should disclose ties not only to their employers but to other medical organizations. 

Read more about the Institute for Medicine report.

Senate Confirms HHS Chief

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Today, the United States Senate confirmed Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius as Secretary of Health and Human Services on a 65-31 vote. The confirmation comes at a critical moment, as the Obama administration deals with swine flu emergency that has surfaced in the past week. The confirmation completes President Obama’s cabinet and adds a voice to the administration that will be critical in dealing with an anticipated reform of the nation’s health insurance system. 

TheSenate Finance Committee, chaired by Max Baucus (D-MT), could begin to hold mark-ups of health insurance reform legislation as early as June of this year, with full consideration by the Senate this fall. The inclusion of budget reconciliation language, on health insurance reform and student loan reform, in the FY10 budget resolution that is emerging from Congress could mean that health insurance reform would need only a simple majority to pass, and would not be threatened by a filibuster led by the minority party. However, the White House and Congressional leaders have expressed a desire to pass health insurance reform in a bi-partisan fashion.

President Obama Makes Remarks to National Academy of Sciences

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THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary
____________________________________________________________________________
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
April 27, 2009
 
Remarks of President Barack Obama – As Prepared for Delivery
National Academy of Sciences
Washington, DC
April 27, 2009
 
It is my privilege to address the distinguished members of the National Academy of Sciences, as well as the leaders of the National Academy of Engineering and the Institute of Medicine who have gathered here this morning.
 
I’d like to begin today with a story of a previous visitor who also addressed this august body.
 
In April of 1921, Albert Einstein visited the United States for the first time. His international celebrity was growing as scientists around the world began to understand and accept the vast implications of his theories of special and general relativity. He attended this annual meeting, and after sitting through a series of long speeches by others, he reportedly said, “I have just got a new theory of eternity.” I’ll do my best to heed this cautionary tale.
 
The very founding of this institution stands as a testament to the restless curiosity and boundless hope so essential not just to the scientific enterprise, but to this experiment we call America.
 
A few months after a devastating defeat at Fredericksburg, before Gettysburg would be won and Richmond would fall, before the fate of the Union would be at all certain, President Lincoln signed into law an act creating the National Academy of Sciences.
 
Lincoln refused to accept that our nation’s sole purpose was merely to survive. He created this academy, founded the land grant colleges, and began the work of the transcontinental railroad, believing that we must add “the fuel of interest to the fire of genius in the discovery… of new and useful things.”
 
This is America’s story. Even in the hardest times, and against the toughest odds, we have never given in to pessimism; we have never surrendered our fates to chance; we have endured; we have worked hard; we have sought out new frontiers.
 
Today, of course, we face more complex set of challenges than we ever have before: a medical system that holds the promise of unlocking new cures and treatments – attached to a health care system that holds the potential to bankrupt families and businesses.  A system of energy that powers our economy – but also endangers our planet.  Threats to our security that seek to exploit the very interconnectedness and openness so essential to our prosperity. And challenges in a global marketplace which links the derivative trader on Wall Street to the homeowner on Main Street, the office worker in America to the factory worker in China – a marketplace in which we all share in opportunity, but also in crisis.

Continue reading “President Obama Makes Remarks to National Academy of Sciences”

Sebelius Nomination Draws Fire but Advances

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The nomination of Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius to head the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) advanced out of the Senate Finance Committee yesterday, leaving only a vote of the full Senate. What was once expected to be a rather comfortable confirmation has evolved into a rather partisan debate over President Obama’s intentions in reforming the U.S. health insurance system. Conservatives on the panel sought assurances — which they did not receive — from Governor Sebelius that HHS would not seek a plan that limited consumer choice of doctor, hospital, or coverage options. Despite the reservations expressed by some members, the Senate Finance Committee approved the nomination on a largely party line 15-8 vote. Consideration of the nomination by the full Senate could take place later this week.