February 23, 2005—A bill approved by the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee that would extend funding for state pools that sell health coverage to risky-to-insure individuals would cost $355 million in 2005–2010, the Congressional Budget Office said in a new estimate. The bill (S 288)—the State High Risk Pool Funding Extension Act of 2005—would cost $14 million in 2005, it added. States created the insurance pools to offer coverage to people who can't find health benefits in the commercial marketplace because they have costly illnesses. Policies sold through the pools are very expensive and may exclude payment for certain types of care but offer coverage to the otherwise uninsurable. Read more »
February 23, 2005—Spending on public health care programs will account for nearly half of health care spending in 2014, according to estimates released by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. The CMS report states that health care spending is expected to account for a larger portion of the economy's resources over the next 10 years, with the public sector footing a larger share of the cost. By 2014, it estimates that health care spending will constitute 18.7 percent of the gross domestic product, up from 15.3 percent in 2003. Read more »
February 22, 2005—Sharpened appraisals made in recent days by key players in the debate over the Bush administration's Medicaid overhaul plan suggest common ground on proposals to change drug reimbursement and tighten asset-related eligibility tests for long term care coverage. But the more detailed analyses revealed a wide gulf among key players over the overhaul plan's provisions for "flexibility" in establishing Medicaid benefits and for ending several controversial methods used by the states of getting more Medicaid money from the federal government. Read more »
February 22, 2005—Disparities related to race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status remain in the American health care system but improvements have been made in several areas, including diabetes, mammogram testing, and medication errors, according to two new federal reports. The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), an agency within HHS, released its second annual national reports on the quality of and disparities in health care in America. The reports measure quality and disparities in effectiveness of care, patient safety, timeliness, and patient centeredness. The reports also present disparities in the quality of access and differences in access to services for clinical conditions such as cancer, diabetes, and nursing home and home health care. Read more »
February 22, 2005—FEBRUARY 22, 2005 – The House Ways and Means Health Subcommittee plans more than a dozen oversight hearings in the 109th session of Congress, including on retiree health benefits, health savings accounts, and Medicare coverage of new technologies. In a letter to the House committees on Administration and on Government Reform, Ways and Means Committee Chairman Bill Thomas, R-Calif., said the Health Subcommittee will hold a hearing to evaluate management of the Medicare program by CMS, including that agency's progress in implementing the Medicare overhaul law (PL 108-173). In a separate and broader statement of his objectives, Thomas explained that oversight of the law is "critical to ensure there is little or no disruption for seniors or providers in receiving or delivering benefits." Read more »