OVERNIGHT HEALTH: Healthcare law fight shaping up as key issue for 2012 election

{mosads}Garbled message: Democrats for Life of America are touting a recent post on an anti-abortion-rights news site as an unintentional admission that the healthcare law doesn’t cover abortions.

The post, by contributing blogger Bill Saunders, describes the law’s restrictions on abortion coverage as “pretty complicated” and acknowledged that it “makes logical sense that some insurance companies may decide to drop insurance coverage for abortion, and thereby avoid all of the mathematical and logistical confusion that the [law] PPACA requires.” Saunders adds that the law also allows states to bar plans that offer abortion from participating in the exchanges; 12 have done so to date, he writes, and “more are certain to follow before the Exchanges must be operational in 2014.”

“Between the complications created by the [healthcare reform law] and individual state decisions to prohibit private abortion coverage,” Saunders concludes, “the abortion lobby’s desire for a world where an abortion is viewed and covered no differently than a routine gynecological exam is becoming less and less of a probability.”

Ryan’s vision: House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) offered his vision for healthcare reform to an audience at Stanford’s Hoover Institution. The takeaway: “Simply put, badly designed government policies are to blame for much of what is wrong with health care today, and the solution is clear: We need to transition from the open-ended, defined-benefit approach of the past … to market-oriented, defined-contribution reforms that promote choice and competition.”

Wednesday’s agenda 

The Department of Health and Human Services and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services make separate healthcare reform announcements.

And HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and the director of the Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Devices and Radiological Health, Jeffery Shuren, address the 2011 AdvaMed medical device conference. 

State by state

Arkansas’s insurance commissioner is asking the state legislature to create an insurance exchange.

An expert panel in Maine is getting closer to releasing recommendations for the state’s insurance exchange.

Florida accepted a healthcare reform grant last week despite Gov. Rick Scott’s strong resistance to implementing the law.

Bill tracker

Rep. Dave Reichert (R-Wash.) introduced legislation to provide for payment for services of qualified radiologist assistants under the Medicare program (H.R. 3032).

Rep. Karen Bass (D-Calif.) has legislation establishing a commission to accelerate the end of breast cancer (H.R. 3067).

Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) has a bill authorizing the establishment in the Department of Veterans Affairs of a center for technical assistance for non-Department health care providers who furnish care to veterans in rural areas (S. 1631).

Lobbying registrations

Van Scoyoc Associates / International Partnership for Microbicides

Cassidy & Associates / Phibro Animal Health (medicinal feed additives for livestock)

Cassidy & Associates / Linde North America (medical gases)

McDermott Will & Emery / Alice Hyde Medical Center (Medicare reimbursements)

Jones, Walker, Waechter, Poitevent, Carrere & Denegre / The Lifecare Group(rural healthcare facilities)

Fraud fight

Guidant, a subsidiary of Boston Scientific, will pay $9.25 million to settle False Claims Act allegations that it inflated the cost of replacement pacemakers and defibrillators to federal healthcare programs.

Two Miami-area residents pleaded guilty in a $25 million home health Medicare fraud scheme.

Reading list

The AP notices that Democrats have tried to shift the healthcare debate toward Medicare in an effort to capitalize on Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-Wis.) plan to convert Medicare into a sort of voucher system.

And Politico reveals that the White House contends it can’t be sued over a healthcare reform advisory panel that never existed.

Comments / complaints / suggestions?

Please let us know:

Julian Pecquet: jpecquet@digital-stage.thehill.com / 202-628-8527

Sam Baker: sbaker@digital-stage.thehill.com / 202-628-8351

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