Chiropractic Breakthrough

The Obama administration prevailed Wednesday in the first appellate review of the 2010 health care law as a three-judge panel from the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit held that it was constitutional for Congress to require that Americans buy health insurance.

Senators Coburn and Lieberman jumped into Congress’ cut-the-deficit competition on Tuesday, proposing to raise the age of Medicare eligibility to 67 and increase monthly premiums for millions of current beneficiaries. Democrats reacted with criticism of the proposal. Republicans betrayed no sign of support either.

As the high-level negotiations continue, health care advocates are stepping up their campaigns to protect against Medicare and Medicaid cuts, and physicians groups maintain that a permanent fix to Medicare’s physician payment formula should be included in the debt-ceiling legislation.

Alarmed by a shortage of primary care doctors, Obama administration officials are recruiting a team of “mystery shoppers” to pose as patients, call doctors’ offices and request appointments to see how difficult it is for people to get care when they need it. It will also try to discover whether doctors are accepting patients with private insurance while turning away those in government health programs that pay lower reimbursement rates.

A federal judge ruled Friday that the State of Indiana could not cut off money for Planned Parenthood clinics providing health care to low-income women on Medicaid. Planned Parenthood provides services other than abortion, including family planning and screenings for cancer and sexually transmitted diseases.

Google is giving up on its vision of helping people live healthier lives with online personal health records. In the drive to apply information technology to health care, personalized health records are the element that relies most heavily on individual motivation and efforts. They are controlled by the consumer, and require individuals to put in, update and edit their health data.

Both Democrats and Republicans appear to be increasingly entrenched on key issues, including changes to entitlement programs like Medicare. Meanwhile, the Congressional Budget Office issued a daunting report, warning that the national debt will exceed the size of the national economy by 2021.

Federal regulators are pushing back a deadline for states to establish consumer protection standards for health plan denials, appeals and independent reviews. States will now have until Jan. 1, 2012, to approve legislation that complies with these standards, instead of the original deadline of July 1.

The American Medical Association reaffirmed its support for the most contentious plank of the new health care law — requiring most Americans to carry insurance or pay a fee — but not before a lengthy debate at its annual meeting in Chicago this past weekend.

The future of Medicare and Medicaid will be a hot topic as negotiations on the debt ceiling continue this week. At least three bipartisan meetings helmed by Vice President Biden have been scheduled, and both parties began to make concessions this past week as a possible deal appeared to emerge.