The Wall Street Journal: Sebelius's Price Controls And seasons greetings from the folks at Health and Human Services too. Yesterday the department dropped one of ObamaCare's more destructive regulations, which will further increase political control of health care and impose price controls on private insurance premiums. Under the 136-page rule, the federal government will now decide what counts as an "unreasonable" rate increase, and HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius wrote to Governors yesterday urging them "to prevent unjustified and excessive health insurance premium growth" (12/22).The Seattle Times: State's Hard-Times Budget Makes Hard ??” And Necessary ??” Cuts What's left is a hard-times budget that contains hard decisions. This page would have made some decisions differently. (Gov. Chris_ Gregoire negotiated an increase of 3 percentage points in state employees' share of health-insurance premiums, to 15 percent. We thought that was too small, and said so (12/21). Modern Healthcare: Go Get 'Em While I understand that these approaches may not work best for all hospital organizations, I recommend that healthcare CEOs take a step back, learn to be aggressive and embrace the world of technology. You never know??”it just may save your hospital from closing its doors (Steve Ronstrom, 12/20).Philadelphia Inquirer: Why The United States Can't Audit Its Own Budget The government's own auditors say they can't verify the accuracy of the budget of the United States, because the military, Medicare planners, and other big federal programs are doing such a poor job explaining what they do with the people's money. This is at least the 10th consecutive year that the Government Accountability Office has found the federal budget un-auditable, spokeswoman Laura Kopelson told me (Joseph DiStefano, 12/22). Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Making Us Healthier: New Law Puts Kids On The Road To Healthier Lives Our nation will not succeed if our children are not learning because they are hungry or are not achieving because they are unhealthy. We are confronting these challenges -- we are committed to raising a generation of healthy Americans ready to learn, innovate, prosper and lead our nation (Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, 12/21). The Arizona Republic: A Parting That Was Inevitable To what extent must the preservation of life be pursued? In the view of the Rev. Thomas J. Olmsted, bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Phoenix, the directors of St. Joe's have failed to pursue it sufficiently far to meet the hospital's obligations to the Catholic Church. ??¦ Ultimately, it is the ... medical people on the scene who must make the necessary choices, often of life and death, regarding their patients (12/22).

Des Moines Register: FDA Did Its Job On Avastin The responsibility of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration is clear: Focus on the safety and effectiveness of drugs. Not the cost. ??¦ Last week, the FDA announced it was taking the first steps toward revoking the approval of Avastin to treat patients with breast cancer (12/22).

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.