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OVERNIGHT HEALTH: Liberal group touts plan to curb health spending

by Sam Baker and Elise Viebeck - 08/02/12 9:50 PM ET

Among the 11 proposals are provisions for medical malpractice reform,
transparency in medical pricing and a ban on physicians referring
patients to facilities in which they have a financial interest. Ezekiel
Emanuel, a co-author and a former White House healthcare adviser, said
the reforms are designed to “let the market work its magic.”

Read more about the plan at Healthwatch and at CAP.

Saving money, living better: The largest U.S. private employer, Wal-Mart, endorsed the plan ahead of its release Thursday. The company’s senior vice president for benefits, Sally Welborn, praised the proposals for encouraging a healthcare system that “rewards quality and efficiency.” “These principles are a strong foundation that can set the U.S. healthcare system on a path of sustainable growth,” she said in a statement.

Reuters has more from Wal-Mart’s announcement.

Conservative alternative: Right-leaning experts laid out their own cost-control ideas in a separate New England Journal of Medicine article and an event Thursday at the American Enterprise Institute. They called for a broad transition to defined contributions in every facet of the government’s involvement.

AEI’s Joe Antos said cost-control should begin with a Medicare plan similar to Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-Wis.), which would partially privatize the program. Antos called for a system, like Ryan’s, in which seniors would get subsidies to help buy private insurance. Traditional Medicare would also have to be a part of any “politically viable” plan, Antos said.

The AEI paper also calls for rolling back federal tax credits for employer-based coverage.

“Converting the current exclusion to a predetermined refundable credit would be a reform similar to premium support for Medicare,” the conservatives wrote. “A less dramatic compromise would set a dollar limit on the tax exclusion that is indexed to grow more slowly than the trend in medical spending.”

The full article is available here.

Third way: The Bipartisan Policy Center is also getting in on the cost-control conversation. The think tank announced Thursday that it will launch a new initiative to “review and evaluate the most promising strategies for health care cost containment.” The BPC effort will include former Sens. Tom Daschle (D-S.D.), Pete Domenici (R-N.M.) and Bill Frist (R-Tenn.), as well as former White House Budget Director Alice Rivlin.

Rivlin and Domenici have previously endorsed a premium-support model for Medicare.

IRS defends itself: IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman defended his agency Thursday as Republicans continued to accuse it of stretching the law in implementing the Affordable Care Act’s insurance subsidies. GOP members of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee argued that subsides should only be available in state-run exchanges, not the federal fallback. Shulman, though, said the IRS is simply implementing the law according to agency lawyers’ best interpretation.

“There’s actually a process in this country that allows Congress to write the laws, we implement them, and if there’s a disagreement, there’s always the courts,” Shulman said.

Healthwatch has the story from Thursday’s hearing.

Ryan revealed: The New Yorker’s Ryan Lizza has a long and interesting profile of House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and how he managed to pull most of the Republican Party into supporting his dramatic — and highly controversial — Medicare plan. Ryan started from the outside, building support among think-tankers and conservative columnists who then helped pressure congressional Republicans to get on board, Lizza reports. And President Obama helped make Ryan the face of the Republican policy apparatus during the healthcare debate by singling out the Budget Committee chairman’s plan for criticism.

The profile is also full of detail about Ryan’s role in blocking several budget compromises and the tension between the GOP’s “Young Guns,” including Ryan, and Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio). Read the whole thing.

Missing the mark? The National Taxpayers Union Foundation says the Congressional Budget Office was wrong to score the cost of repealing “ObamaCare” at $109 billion. Repeal would actually save money, NTUF said, arguing that CBO underestimated the cost of certain taxes and other policies. The analysis is here.

Friday’s agenda

Americans for Prosperity will hold a rally against healthcare reform on Capitol Hill.

State by state

Mass. session gives wins on casinos, health costs

Missouri officials mull impact of forgoing Medicaid expansion

Texas is home to 40% of home healthcare agencies with suspicious claims

Opinion: Oregon healthcare experiment begins this week

Lobbying registrations

Koinonia Holmes / self-registration

Reading list

Senators urge crackdown on Medicaid providers who cheat on taxes [registration required]

Cash rewards keep people on their medications