Week ahead: Debt ceiling, entitlement fights dominate health debate

{mosads}Off the Hill, the other health policy battlefield is the federal judiciary, where several challenges to the healthcare reform law are moving along.

Briefs are due Monday in the District of Columbia circuit case of five taxpayers who are challenging the individual mandate on religious and other grounds. On Wednesday, reply briefs are due in the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, which will hear the 26-state challenge on June 8. That same day, the 6th Circuit Court will announce the three-judge panel that will hear the Thomas More Law Center’s challenge on June 1.

In other news, Guatemala’s vice president will be in Washington on Wednesday to testify about research into sexually transmitted diseases conducted in the 1940s and supported by the U.S. Public Health Service in which vulnerable people were intentionally infected. President Obama has called for the federal Bioethics Commission to investigate the Inoculation Study.

And on Thursday, rheumatologists and rheumatology health professionals visit Capitol Hill to meet with lawmakers. Recent statistics show that arthritis and other rheumatic diseases cost the United States $127.8 billion a year. That’s more than the $104 billion in costs for cancer care.