The New York Times: Senate Approves Two Pieces Of Jobs BillBut lawmakers saw little evidence of such cooperation in the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction, which is supposed to vote on its final recommendations by Nov. 23. A co-chairman of the committee, Representative Jeb Hensarling, Republican of Texas, broke his silence on the panel's internal deliberations on Thursday and assailed Democrats as intransigent. Mr. Hensarling said that Republicans had made "a major concession" by proposing tax increases, and he asserted that Democrats had not reciprocated by proposing major cuts in the growth of benefits programs like Medicare and Medicaid (Pear and Steinhauer, 11/10).
The Associated Press/Washington Post: Senate Kills GOP Jobs Plan Cutting Tax Rates, Repealing Health Care Law And Other RegulationsA divided Senate has voted to kill a Republican plan that would cut income tax rates, repeal the new health care law and block or overturn dozens of environmental, labor and energy rules. The 56-40 vote was mostly along party lines (11/10).
The Washington Post: Wonk Blog: Should Government Regulate Health Care Prices? Massachusetts Weighs The Option.After passing universal coverage, Massachusetts is now in the throes of a debate about how to bring down its skyrocketing health care costs. And the state's new proposal to regulate how much providers charge for health care could mark a very important and controversial chapter in that fight (Kliff, 11/10).
USA Today: Medical Testing Companies' Medicare Deal ScrutinizedThe Senate Finance Committee is probing medical testing companies to determine if they offer insurers heavy discounts in exchange for the insurers funneling all of their Medicare tests their way, Senate investigators and a former company employee have told USA TODAY (Kennedy, 11/10).
Chicago Tribune: Illinois Mammogram Providers To Be Paid More If They Submit Quality Breast Cancer DataStarting next year, health facilities and providers in Illinois that perform screening and diagnostic mammograms will receive higher Medicaid reimbursement for the procedures if they voluntarily submit data showing how well they identify small cancers and track women with abnormal mammograms, among other quality measures (Shelton, 11/11).
This article was reprinted from kaiserhealthnews with permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent news service, is a program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health care policy research organization unaffiliated with Kaiser Permanente.