Leading House Republicans raised the prospect that they might refuse to participate in President Obama's proposed healthcare summit if the White House chooses not to scrap the existing reform bills and start over. In a letter to White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, House Minority Leader John A. Boehner and Minority Whip Eric Cantor expressed frustration at reports that Obama intends to put the Democratic bills on the table for discussion at the Feb. 25 summit, the Washington Post reports.
If Congressional Republicans decide to participate in President Obama's bipartisan healthcare summit this month, they have laid out principles and alternatives that provide a road map to what a Republican healthcare bill would look like if they had the power to decide the outcome. The Republicans have a set of ideas intended to make health insurance more widely available and affordable, by emphasizing tax incentives and state innovations, with no new federal mandates and only a modest expansion of the federal safety net, the New York Times reports.
Both the White House and congressional Republicans see opportunity in an upcoming bipartisan summit on healthcare, the Wall Street Journal reports. Republicans have rejected outright any health legislation that doesn't start from scratch, but the White House reiterated it has no intention of changing its fundamental approach. Still, the White House hopes the televised meeting will change the tone of the healthcare debate by showing Democrats are open to Republican ideas, many of which are already in their bills, the Journal reports.
Connecticut's largest physician organization wants answers after several doctors received faxed requests for patients' medical information from an insurer. UnitedHealthcare subsidiary Ingenix sent faxed requests to physicians, asking for information dating to Jan. 1, 2008. Medical society Executive Vice President Matthew Katz says while it is not uncommon for insurers to ask to review patients' charts, doctors don't generally receive requests for information by fax and they don't fax such sensitive information to third parties they don't know.
The Tennessee Hospital Association's members will push for a temporary tax on their revenues to reduce cuts to the TennCare program proposed by Gov. Phil Bredesen. The association's board voted to approve a one-year "coverage fee" of 1%-2% that would raise money for hospital services scheduled to receive less funding from TennCare. The fee likely would go into effect July 1 and would not be passed along to patients, association officials said. The group also will lobby the state to dip further into reserves and to use any additional revenue that comes into the state to reduce TennCare cuts, The Tennessean reports.
UnitedHealthcare has started sending doctors individualized reports assessing their treatment of breast, lung, and colorectal cancer patients. The reports show that while breast-cancer patients generally receive care that conforms to professional protocols, treatments given for colorectal and lung cancer tend to fail to meet expert recommendations more often. The company says it hopes that drawing doctors' attention to how their treatments might vary from medical protocol will reduce unnecessary care that doesn't improve health and raises healthcare costs.