Health Care For America Now

NEWS

Healthcare stressed at Obama's 'fiscal responsibility summit' - McClatchy Newspapers

President Barack Obama will convene a White House meeting next week to address runaway health-care costs. On Monday he called it key to reining in federal spending as he tries to balance plans to spend the country out of recession with shoring up its long-term fiscal health.

A warning shot in the healthcare fight - Los Angeles Tiimes

A relatively obscure proposal in Obama's economic stimulus plan stirred passions on both sides of the healthcare reform effort.

Health Care Tops Fiscal Need List - Washington Post

Medical Costs Threaten the Nation With Bankruptcy, White House Says at Summit

Health care costs to top $8,000 per person - Associated Press

A new government report on medical costs paints a stark picture for President Barack Obama, who is expected to call for a health care overhaul in a speech Tuesday night to a joint session of Congress.

Recession to push more into public health coverage, analysts say - McClatchy

Six million Americans are expected to lose private health coverage by the end of next year, while Medicaid, the national health program for low-income Americans, will beef up its enrollment to pick up much of the slack, federal health analysts reported Monday.

Stimulus ignites health care debate - Politico

Pharmaceutical companies have spent more than two years and tens of millions of dollars working to shed their reputation as a Republican hatchet squad. But making the turn to the center has been especially difficult for an industry whose one-sided political strategy was legendary.

OPINION

Promising Health-Care Research - Washington Post

Business columnist Steven Pearlstein was off base when he said the American Cancer Society opposes comparative effectiveness health-care research ["Bloviation vs. Reality on Stimulus Health-Care Provision," Feb. 13]. As an evidence-based organization, the Cancer Society strongly supports such research as a way to produce better results for patients.

Health Care in the Stimulus - Betsy McCaughey

Well-intentioned people differ about the role of the federal government in health care, but who can argue about the need for transparency?

Entitlements on the back of an envelope - Paul Krugman

Today’s “fiscal responsibility” summit, which was originally much feared as a Trojan Horse for Social Security cuts, has apparently been downgraded into relative obscurity. But I thought it might nonetheless be worth talking briefly about the math of the entitlements issue.

Entitlement Reform Is Health Care Reform - Think Progress

Ezra Klein sums up the theme of today’s White House Fiscal Summit: “Fiscal responsibility, in other words, is no longer a stand-in for entitlement reform. In Obama’s Washington, it means health reform.”