Witnesses representing business, labor, and think tanks asked Congress for help with controlling health care costs and reducing the number of uninsured Americans. Read more »
Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus said he would like to change the language in the current House bill (HR 4) that would "require" the government to negotiate Medicare drug prices. Instead, Baucus said he would simply remove the current prohibition on negotiations from existing law (PL 108-173). Read more »
Democrats delivered on another campaign promise when the House easily passed a bill that would require the administration to negotiate Medicare drug prices. Hugs and kisses might be harder to come by in the Senate, where the bill awaits a much tougher path. It also faces a veto from President Bush. Read more »
The Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPac) is preparing to file a report with Congress that would chart two alternative paths to fixing the flawed mechanism for paying doctors—one of which would entail setting expenditure targets encompassing all providers, not just limiting the expenditure target to physicians, which is the case under the current system. Read more »
A third of states have taken steps to cover more of their uninsured residents but a new federal law may be undercutting some of those efforts, according to a study by the Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured. Read more »
A sharp drop in the growth of prescription drug spending helped keep the rise in overall U.S. health care spending down to 6.9 percent in 2005, federal economists said. But the figures hardly suggest that concerns over rising health care costs are likely to ease. Read more »