One of the casualties from last week's congressional elections is a familiar face in the healthcare industry: Rep. Pete Stark, the California Democrat who currently serves as the Ways and Means Health Subcommittee's ranking member and is widely known for the three-part physician self-referral law that bears his name.
A longtime champion of a single-payer healthcare system, Stark—who has served in the U.S. House of Representatives in the 8th, 9th and currently 13th district of California since 1973—was beaten by Eric Swalwell, a fellow Democrat, to represent the Golden State's 15th district. In the healthcare industry, Stark's influence largely stems from his work drafting legislation that governs physician self-referral in the Medicare and Medicaid programs. The first phase prohibited physician self-referral for clinical lab services in Medicare starting in 1992, and additional phases became effective in 1994 and 2007, as the law eventually expanded to other healthcare services and also applied to Medicaid.
From 2007 to 2010, Stark served as the subcommittee's chairman. His departure now leaves open the health subcommittee ranking-member spot on the hugely influential panel that makes tax law.
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Coming off a historic slapdown by the government’s nonpartisan ethics watchdog over a recent political speech, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius hopped right back into the political fray this week.
Sebelius spoke Wednesday to a Washington gathering of the National Hispanic Council on Aging just a few weeks after the independent U.S. Office of Special Counsel found she violated federal law. The office cited her “extemporaneous partisan remarks” delivered during a February speech in which Sebelius was acting in her official capacity as head of HHS. It was the first such finding against a senior administration official since 2007.
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