“Debates are what make America great,” Johnny Carson said on The Tonight Show 28 years ago this month. “The candidates stand before their electorate and reporters ask hard-hitting questions, and it's up to the people to decide which one evaded them more skillfully.”
We'll have our first chance to do that in this election cycle tonight, as President Barack Obama and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney will match up at the University of Denver for the first of three presidential debates this month. On Tuesday, lawmakers and health policy experts prepared for healthcare to feature prominently in that discussion.
In a call with reporters, Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) and former Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm centered on women's health and equal pay for women. Granholm said she expects “zero details” from Romney about his plan for the future, even though American women and their families deserve more than “vague platitudes.”
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Later this week, the nation's hospitals and physicians will launch another round of ads in Washington-based publications to warn Congress of the disastrous results that will come from cuts to Medicare early next year. Meanwhile, an investigative study from the Center for Public Integrity shows one way hospitals and doctors are coping with the tough federal reimbursement environment: steadily billing higher rates for treating Medicare patients in the last 10 years.
Established in 1989, the Center for Public Integrity is a nonpartisan, not-for-profit, investigative news organization. In its new study, the center found that from 2001 through 2010, thousands of providers chose more expensive billing codes over less costlier ones, even though “there's little hard evidence they spent more time with patients or that their patients were sicker and required more complicated—and time-consuming—care.”
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Do you catch more advocacy groups with honey than vinegar?
One House Republican is trying to win over a key supporter of the federal healthcare law.
The AARP's support of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act was seen as a politically critical step in mollifying seniors' concerns about the legislation. Since the law's enactment, the group's support has served as a continuing bulwark against Republican charges that the law will undermine Medicare. And as Medicare has risen to prominence in the presidential campaign with the Republican vice presidential nomination of Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), the advocacy group for older Americans has again moved to political fore.
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