As the Senate Finance Committee has taken center stage in the battle over healthcare reform, Chairman Max Baucus has emerged as a leading recipient of Senate campaign contributions from the hospitals, insurers, and other medical interest groups hoping to shape the legislation to their advantage. Health-related companies and their employees gave Baucus's political committees nearly $1.5 million in 2007 and 2008, when he began holding hearings and making preparations for this year's reform debate.
Democratic Congressional leaders, bowing to unease among lawmakers and governors in their own party, have suggested scaling back a plan to tax top earners to pay for healthcare legislation and signaled a retreat from their ambitious timetable. The House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, suggested revising the tax-raising provisions, one of the most contentious parts of the House bill, which would impose a surtax on high-income households. Pelosi said she would prefer that fewer people had to pay the tax, which was approved by the Ways and Means Committee.
With divided Democrats and polls showing rising public anxiety about President Obama's handling of healthcare and the economy, Republicans have launched an aggressive effort to link the two, comparing the health-care bills moving through Congress to what they labeled as a failed economic stimulus bill. Republican National Committee Chairman Michael S. Steele said in a speech that Obama is "conducting a dangerous experiment with our healthcare," and added "he's conducting a reckless experiment with our economy."
Facing a crisis in its pension fund, 1199, New York's giant healthcare union, reached a settlement that calls for forgoing nearly a billion dollars in raises for 145,000 union members so that hospitals can increase their pension contributions to safeguard future retirement benefits. The union agreed to a wage freeze for next year, but also accepted less generous pensions for future hires.
There were hundreds of incidents of death or serious medical harm disclosed in the past year by hospitals in the Washington, DC, region, preventable errors that until recently have not required public reporting. Under laws that took effect last year in Virginia and a few years earlier in Washington and Maryland, hospitals must report to health regulators many serious injuries that patients suffer in the course of treatment.
Anthem Blue Cross is seeking approval from the Connecticut Insurance Department for increases averaging 23%, running as high as 32%. They would apply to about 56,000 individual policies bought by consumers under 65. During questioning, Attorney General Richard Blumenthal quizzed Anthem officials on profits. George Siriotis, regional vice president of individual sales at Anthem, said rising healthcare costs, including what he called unnecessary testing, use of brand-name medication, and the heavy use of diagnostic imaging have forced the rate increases.