President Obama urged congressional Democrats "to finish the job on healthcare," and suggested that Republicans could be enlisted to play at least some role in negotiating a final bill, the Washington Post reports. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid have struggled for a way to salvage healthcare legislation that had appeared on the verge of final passage until a special election in Massachusetts deprived Democrats of their filibuster-proof Senate majority. In the coming days, Reid and Pelosi are expected to confer with the president to determine whether Democrats can pass the existing healthcare bill or will be forced to start over, the Post reports.
Kathleen Sebelius, the secretary of health and human services, told Congress that she could not guarantee greater openness in negotiations over legislation to remake the nation's healthcare system. Sebelius said administration officials provided “technical support” to Congress, but did not control the negotiations. Her comments came just hours after President Obama affirmed the need for openness in efforts by the administration and Congress to finish work on a health reform bill, the New York Times reports.
The financially ailing St. Vincent's Hospital Manhattan in Greenwich Village got a month's reprieve when New York Gov. David A. Paterson met with hospital officials, elected officials, and others to try to keep the hospital from closing. The governor said that he expected to be able to keep the hospital afloat for the next four weeks through a combination of state loans and help from its creditors. Paterson said he was forming a task force to look at how to run the hospital more efficiently and to examine the healthcare needs of the surrounding community and how they might best be delivered, the New York Times reports.
While President Obama promoted the new job-creation program he described as his No. 1 priority, he refused to abandon his embattled healthcare legislation, vowing to "punch it through" resistance in Congress. The strong emphasis on healthcare came a week after he did not mention it until deep into his State of the Union address, and he seemed intent on erasing any doubts about his commitment, the New York Times reports.
With their sweeping healthcare reform bill on hold, House Democrats plan to revive a sliver of the legislation that would repeal an antitrust exemption for insurance companies. The Democrats say repealing the federal antitrust exemption would drive insurance prices down in regions where one health insurer dominates. Insurers say they already face tight regulation by the states, and the practical impact of the move is uncertain, the Wall Street Journal reports. Supporters of the overhaul have made some attempts to link the health bill to job creation, pointing out that expanding insurance would spur hiring in the health sector, the Journal reports.
The California Medical Board put a doctor with a flawed disciplinary history in charge of monitoring another troubled doctor who, while under supervision, allegedly mishandled an abortion leading to a patient's death, the Los Angeles Times reports. The regulators violated their own rules by naming Christopher Dotson Jr., MD, a Los Angeles-based obstetrician-gynecologist who had recently emerged from administrative probation, to supervise the probation of Andrew Rutland, an Orange County obstetrician. The rules require such overseers to have clean disciplinary records.