A proposal to stabilize the Obamacare exchanges would allow people who live in counties with no insurer to buy coverage from the same place members of Congress get theirs: Through the small business exchange in Washington, D.C., created under the law.

Just like members of Congress and their staff members who live in other states, people from these "empty" counties would be able to buy coverage through the D.C. small business exchange, called SHOP. But because they don't receive contributions from an employer to pay for coverage, the federal government would contribute toward the cost of premiums if they meet a certain income threshold.

The idea, called the Health Care Options for All Act, from Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., is somewhat similar to an often-cited proposal by Republicans, which would enable people to buy their coverage across state lines, but it's not clear whether it would receive bipartisan support. Outside experts caution that some hurdles would need to be worked out.

For instance, the way that SHOP and the individual exchange work financially is different. Under SHOP, people receive contributions from their jobs to help them pay for coverage. Under the individual exchange, which often covers people who are self-employed, customers can receive federal subsidies to help pay for premiums and out-of-pocket medical costs. SHOP is not set up to calculate these federal subsidies, but would need to be under the McCaskill proposal.

"I think it's creative, but there are problems," Timothy Jost, emeritus professor at the Washington and Lee University School of Law, said of the proposal. "How do you figure out what the premium tax credit is, and how do you administer that? My impression is that it isn't something they could do, or not something they could do without a tremendous amount of reworking the system."

Also, insurers would go from covering a predictable customer base to adding customers who may have more costly medical needs, and having to do so on short notice because final contracts must be signed Sept. 27.

"From an actuarial point of view, you need to have a good idea of what your population is going to be like in order to set your rates," said David Anderson, research associate of the Health Policy Evidence Hub at Duke University's Margolis Center for Health Policy. "A national insurer can make a wild guess as to what that might look like, but they can't make a guess if they don't have enough time to figure out who might not be covered."

McCaskill has been meeting with Democrats and Republicans on various healthcare solutions, according to her office. The bill is drafted so that different agencies would work together to address out the details of the proposal, her office explained, and though she requested the bill pass by unanimous consent, the request was objected to.

Not all states have shared details about how their exchanges are shaping up for next year, but 20 counties across the country, where 12,123 people live, are facing the prospect of having no insurer to buy tax-subsidized coverage from next year, according to data compiled by the Kaiser Family Foundation.

In contrast, the D.C. exchange for small businesses has four insurers to choose from, and at 60,000 customers, it has the largest enrollment of any small business exchange in the country. Because the insurers are national brands, people can use the coverage to see doctors and go to hospitals outside of D.C.

The individual exchanges in states, which are separate from SHOP and allow people to buy tax-subsidized coverage, have struggled while Republicans worked in recent months to repeal and replace portions of Obamacare. Insurers are not obligated to sell plans on the exchanges, and some have announced they would not be participating in the program next year, while others said they were proposing double-digit rate hikes on premiums. The companies have blamed various factors for the decisions, including uncertainty over whether the Trump administration would fund insurer payments under Obamacare as well as massive losses.

The exchanges faced a similar trend last year, and how to address the issue has become the center of fierce debate. Democrats have blamed Republicans for sabotaging the law, and Republicans have pointed to the outcomes to support their assertion that the law is failing under its own weight.

Senators left Washington Thursday for their August recess, vowing that when return they will change course on healthcare and work in a bipartisan way to stabilize the Obamacare exchanges. Divisions already are emerging on what the best way will be to do that, but Democrats have detailed their priorities, which would include a discussion on the McCaskill proposal.

"We should look at Claire McCaskill's proposal for bare counties that offer real opportunities for health insurance for counties the relatively small number of counties all, most all rural, that are not covered," Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said on the Senate floor hours after Republicans failed to advance a healthcare bill.

Even without legislation, the number of empty counties has fluctuated as state officials have worked with insurers to fill them. In McCaskill's home state of Missouri, for instance, health insurer Centene moved to fill empty counties, saying that the exchanges have been profitable.

"This announcement is great news for many Missourians who'll now have more choices for health insurance," McCaskill said in a statement at the time. "But Centene's news continues to underscore the uncertainty in our insurance markets, something that's just unacceptable for folks in my state. And something that my legislation, which would let Missourians who don't have access to a local provider get the same plans that Congress gets, would go a long way to address."

Many of the counties are unattractive to insurers because they are largely rural, but they could still be coaxed into participating by a state because they would have a monopoly on the market and could charge higher rates. In Iowa, for instance, Medica said that it would continue to sell plans in the state as the sole provider on the exchange, but requested an increase of 43.5 percent for the cost of premiums. The federal government kicks in more money toward premiums when rates increase, so most people who buy coverage through the exchanges don't personally feel the increase. But those who make more than $48,000 a year for an individual, the cutoff under the law, will for the most part pay significantly more for premiums, and many of them will have to change plans and likely doctors and hospitals after they switch insurers.

Anderson said that if the counties don't get insurers, another solution would be for the Department of Health and Human Services to temporarily enact Medicaid there, a move that has been used before for public health emergencies, such as the water crisis in Flint, Michigan.

"It could be viable for 2019, but I'm not sure how it works for 2018," Anderson said of the McCaskill proposal.

Originally posted here:

Claire McCaskill turns to Congress' healthcare as a solution for counties without Obamacare insurers - Washington Examiner

Obamacare or the ACA has been a success, though as it exists, it is flawed in many ways and needs many changes to really work. It's been a success in that it brought millions of Americans into the health care system and woke people up to the necessity of health care being a fundamental right for all Americans. It did nothing to rein in the total cost of health care, which at 1/6 of the U.S. GDP is an obscene example of the so-called free market run amok. Health care for Americans will never be affordable without breaking the back of this so-called free market, where everybody gets "a piece of the action."

Unfortunately, the dialog about health care lacks any semblance of honesty. The system as it exists was crafted to protect corporate profits the insurance industry. The entire "fee for service" billing and collection structure is a millstone around our necks. It has produced a vast bureaucracy that serves no purpose except self-perpetuation. Worse yet, the insurance industry is a "cost plus" business. This has enabled the wild and absurd inflation of health care costs.

Rather than looking at the problem with honesty, I see our reps and people in general squabbling over nonsense. "Why should the young and healthy pay for the old and sick?" for example. Guess what? You will one day be old and sick! Pay now and benefit when you are in need. There is no free lunch here. It's time to take responsibility and craft a system that works for future generations.

Go here to read the rest:

Health care critical to all - Billings Gazette

After Senate Republicans failure to repeal Obamacare, Mr. Alexander has set out on what he sees as a rescue mission to stabilize the insurance program by guaranteeing the consumer subsidies to insurance companies that President Trump has threatened to cut off, while granting states more flexibility to offer different insurance options.

He and Senator Patty Murray of Washington, the top Democrat on the panel who has been a productive negotiating partner with Mr. Alexander in the past, have agreed to convene hearings when the Senate returns in September and to try to push some minimalist legislation through Congress by the end of the month.

Even a small bill would be a feat in a Congress that has delivered so few results. But Mr. Alexander, a durable believer in the legislative process, sees it as a possibility, with the alternative being a failure that is certain to rock already reeling individual insurance markets.

It has to be simple if we are to get bipartisan agreement by mid-September on an issue that has divided the parties so much, he said. Stabilizing the markets for a year, he said, would provide breathing room to tackle bigger issues on health care.

Mr. Alexanders political and policy challenges are formidable. First, he would have to get a consensus on his own committee, which ranges from Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, on the right, to Senator Bernie Sanders, independent of Vermont, on the left, with a bit of everything else in between. Then he would have to get it through the full Senate, where nothing to do with health care has been able to attract a majority. Then the measure would go to the House, where resistance is even stronger to anything that resembles an effort to prop up the health care law.

Finally, there is the White House, where President Trump has suggested he might unilaterally terminate the funding Mr. Alexander wants to preserve and let the current health program collapse an idea the senator thinks is a bad one. His opposition could put him in the line of fire from a president he barely knows.

But Mr. Alexander is the rare senator who has strong relationships with Senator Mitch McConnell, the Kentucky Republican and majority leader, as well as Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader. Those ties could prove useful. But he is already under attack from conservatives framing his effort as a bailout for insurers a critique meant to resonate with voters still angry about the 2008 bank bailout.

The Senates inability to produce 51 votes for a piece of legislation that delivers on a seven-year campaign promise to repeal and replace Obamacare is not license for a bipartisan bailout of a failing law, Michael Needham, head of Heritage Action, a conservative advocacy group affiliated with the Heritage Foundation, said. Obamacare is becoming a zombie law, and throwing more taxpayer money at Zombiecare is unacceptable.

Mr. Alexander, who has run for president twice, served as education secretary and was a two-term governor and a university president before joining the Senate in 2003, realizes he is going to come under fire for doing anything seen as sustaining the health care law. He is undeterred.

What would he tell an upset voter? You are not going to think very much of me if I come up here and all I do is argue and never get a result, he said.

In the end, he said, the job is to get a result that can last and people respect that when we do.

If he can be successful in this push, Mr. Alexander hopes it could provide needed momentum for the Senate, one that is admittedly finding it hard to produce because of intense partisanship.

After Senator John McCain, the Arizona Republican, last week called on the Senate to return to the more traditional approach of working together on national problems, Mr. McCain said he had great faith that Mr. Alexander and others could pull off a bipartisan feat. Mr. Alexander said he had embraced that praise as motivation.

We have got a fractured country, he said. This is the most important institution for creating a consensus on tough issues like health care, like civil rights, like elementary and secondary education.

I think most of us understand that, Mr. Alexander said of his colleagues, comparing them to an underachieving football program. It is like a team of All-Americans that is not winning many games. We need to play better.

Back in 2011, Mr. Alexander took the unusual step of surrendering his party leadership post in pursuit of more freedom to work across the aisle rather than hew to the partisan line required of Senate leaders. Even absent the title, he is going to need a large following if he is to bridge the seemingly intractable division over health care.

____________

On your iPhone or iPad:

Open the preloaded app called Podcasts; it has a purple icon. If youre reading this from your phone, tap this link, which will take you straight there. (You can also use the magnifying glass icon to search; type The New Washington.)

Once youre on the series page, you can tap on the episode title to play it, and tap on the subscribe button to have new episodes sent to your phone free.

Or if you prefer another podcast player, you can find The New Washington there. (Heres the RSS feed.)

On your Android phone or tablet:

You can listen and subscribe using the free app RadioPublic, which is available worldwide. If youre reading this from your phone, tap this link to play the latest episode and learn more about the app.

Or if you prefer another podcast player, you can find The New Washington there. (Heres the RSS feed.)

From a desktop or laptop:

Click the play button above to start the show. Make sure to keep that window open on your browser if youre doing other things, or else the audio will stop.

Get politics and Washington news updates via Facebook, Twitter and the Morning Briefing newsletter.

A version of this article appears in print on August 5, 2017, on Page A12 of the New York edition with the headline: On a Mission to Rescue the Health Law.

Link:

Republican Senator Is on a Mission to Rescue the Health Care Law - New York Times

Americas health care

Mass confusion!

One hears people wanting Obamacare to stay in place, while others want Obamacare to be repealed and replaced. Republicans railed against Obamacare for seven years to develop a new and improved health care plan but were too busy complaining to do any real work on a new health care plan!

First, the House of Representatives had fits trying to get a health care bill passed by the Republicans. However, in a last-ditch effort they finally did pass a health care bill and sent it to the Senate.

Then you had Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell just wanting to pass anything in the Senate as his big burning desire was to get rid of Obamacare. Reason: Sen. McConnell hated President Obama for all eight years of his presidency!

Then you have President Trump that bragged he had a great health care bill that would reduce insurance premiums for all Americans all ready to go. Perhaps he misplaced his great health care plan.

Honestly, President Trump does not care whether an American health care plan is good or bad for the citizens of America. President Trump only wants credit for getting a new health care plan bill passed and Obamacare repealed.

Our country just might have health care problems resolved if Sen. McConnell would have worked with all senators instead ofm only allowing Republicans to issue a new health care plan.

Charley Rasp

Enid

More here:

Letter: America's health care - Enid News & Eagle

WOODSTOCK Woodstock officials are exploring accessible health care options in the wake of Centegras announcement to overhaul operations at its Woodstock hospital.

Centegra on Friday announced intent to submit its plans to the Illinois Health Facilities and Services Review Board in mid-August. This follows a June announcement from the health system saying it would suspend most inpatient services as well as discontinue surgical and intensive care services in Woodstock. The changes are set to take effect Aug. 14.

Inpatient behavioral health services will remain at Woodstock hospital, and outpatient behavioral health and inpatient physical rehabilitation services will move to that location as well.

Only certain changes, such as relocating inpatient beds, need state approval. If the changes arent approved, the hospital will have to reverse anything put in place, Centegra spokeswoman Michelle Green said.

The first application filed with the board will be to discontinue the 22-bed comprehensive physical rehabilitation unit at Centegra Hospital McHenry, Green said. An application will also be filed to move those services to Woodstock, she said.

A final application will be to discontinue the medical-surgical and intensive care categories of service at Woodstock, which will result in a loss of 72 beds at that hospital, Green said.

Services previously at Woodstock will be relocated to Centegras other hospitals in McHenry and Huntley.

A public hearing on the changes isnt required unless someone requests one. If a public hearing is requested, it must be held within 30 days of the request.

Woodstock Mayor Brian Sager said its likely the city will request a hearing.

At this point, barring any change in what I understand is the direction in which Centegra is going, it would be in the citys best interest to request a hearing, he said.

He added he has held numerous meetings with Centegra representatives and other health care providers in the area.

The fact is Centegra does have interest in continuing to provide quality health care that is easy and accessible for people of Woodstock and larger region, he said. The city is strongly interested in ensuring residents have access, regardless of the provider, and we will continue the dialogue to ensure that occurs.

Centegra Health System officials projected their financial losses could reach $40 million by the June 30 end of its fiscal year, according to a May 3 filing with Fitch Ratings. Centegras leaders attributed the results in large part to the cost of opening the Huntley hospital and a rise in uncompensated care.

The changes could save the health system $15 million annually, Centegra officials have said. Executives also are working on other strategies to save money. Losses topped $30 million through the first three quarters of its fiscal year.

View post:

Woodstock exploring healthcare options after Centegra announcement to suspend services - Northwest Herald

By CHRISTOPHER THOMPSON August 05. 2017 7:12PM Unless you've completely disconnected from every source of news over the last several months, you can't avoid all of the chatter about health care in the United States. It seems like one of those topics that just carries on and continues with constant debate and no progress. The issues Congress is dealing with are deep and complex, but there's more to this health care debacle.

We've heard the horror stories about certain parts of the country where consumers have only one insurance carrier option, or scenarios where their deductible is so high, they can't afford to get the care they need, or the premiums have increased so much, they simply can't afford it.

Take New Hampshire as an example. In the individual market, one carrier is proposing raising premiums more than 40 percent. It's simply not sustainable for most businesses and consumers.

The majority of Americans have health insurance that is sponsored through their employer. Employer-sponsored plans vary in type, but most companies pay for a large portion of the employee's plan. For most small- and medium-sized businesses, health insurance for employees is often the second or third largest expense, aside from payroll.

As we know, insurance premiums aren't likely going down, and businesses need to find ways to control and minimize the major increases that occur each year.

There are a lot of ways this can be accomplished that you unfortunately don't hear much about.

I recently had lunch with Tom Harte, the CEO of Landmark Benefits (www.landmarkbenefits.com) and talked a lot about how health insurance costs are impacting New Hampshire businesses. Tom explained that the biggest way companies can control their health care costs is by educating their employees on the choices they have when it comes to where they receive medical services.

When a medical situation arises, you do what is necessary to get treatment, and oftentimes, you aren't thinking about the financial side of it. If it's an emergency, you go to the closest hospital or doctor and get taken care of. But what about all of the other medical services that aren't urgent? It's possible to shop around for the best option, and when you do, you'll be blown away by what you find.

There is an app (and website) called MyMedicalShopper that allows you to compare prices for certain procedures across numerous hospitals and medical facilities. This is an example of how businesses can control their health care premium costs by shopping for routine procedures and doing a little bit of research.

Take a MRI as an eye-opening example. According to MyMedicalShopper, Derry Imaging Center in Derry will charge $776 for a MRI. But if you happen to limp into Wentworth Douglass Hospital in Dover for that same procedure, you'll be paying $3,058. How's that for a difference?

Emergency room visits are another example of ways employees can be smarter about their medical care. Let's say you sprained your ankle and went to the emergency room. You can expect to pay substantially more for that visit versus going to an urgent-care clinic like ConvenientMD, which happens to have nine facilities in New Hampshire.

According to the New England Health Institute, 56 percent of emergency room visits were avoidable and many could have been handled in urgent care. According to Aetna, an in-network urgent-care visit can cost as little as 20 percent of the cost of a visit to the ER.

And we can't forget about wellness. Companies that implement wellness programs and incentives for their employees can also reap the benefits of controlling rising costs and having a healthier and more productive workforce. Not everyone will participate, but it's certainly worth the time and resources to create these types of programs.

Health insurance costs for employees is a major part of every company's budget, and it's important to understand how employees can help control and manage those costs. Education on this topic is most important, and most people don't think about the costs of medical services before they get them.

Everyone in the company is accountable and influences the premiums their group will be charged. Reducing costs is a win for both the company and its employees, and more time needs to be spent working on this very serious issue.

Christopher Thompson (chris.thompson@talientaction.com) is vice president of business development at Talient Action Group in Manchester and writes Closing the Deal weekly for the Sunday News.

Business Health Politics

More:

Christopher Thompson's Closing the Deal: We can all help reduce health care expenses - The Union Leader

WASHINGTON - Rep. Chris Collins dramatically increased his campaign fundraising in the first half of the year, and he took more money from health care and pharmaceutical companies than any other special interest at a time when he's under investigation for his ties to an Australian biotech firm.

The Clarence Republican raised $529,964 in the first six months of this year, 77 percent more than he raised in the same period two years earlier. Some $58,500 of that new campaign money came from political action committees tied to the health care industry, including $31,000 from pharmaceutical industry PACs.

Collins' newly aggressive fundraising highlighted the six-month candidate reports filed with the Federal Election Commission, which also showed Rep. Tom Reed -- long a fundraising juggernaut -- raising far more money that any other lawmaker.

Rep. Brian Higgins, a Democrat from a largely Democratic Buffalo-based district, trailed as usual despite a new uptick in contributions from the financial industry.

[Collins, Higgins, Reed campaign financing reports]

Members of Congress often get large shares of their campaign money from special interests, and the three local lawmakers are no exception.

Collins' contributions from the health care special interests -- and especially the donations from drug companies - are notable for two reasons.

He serves on the House Energy and Commerce Committee's Health Subcommittee, and last year he authored a section of important health legislation that speeds the process for new drugs to be approved through clinical trials.

In addition, Collins is the largest shareholder in Innate Immunotherapeutics, an Australian biotech firm that tried and failed to make a successful new drug for multiple sclerosis. Before that drug failed, though, Collins touted the company to his colleagues and Buffalo-area investors, prompting an Office of Congressional Ethics investigation.

Collins talks stock trades just off the House floor again

And before the drug failed, Innate said in corporate filings it was looking to possibly be taken over by a larger pharmaceutical firm. Larger pharmaceutical firms such as Amgen, Merck and Pfizer all have political committees that donated to Collins, who had a fundraiser specifically targeting the pharmaceutical industry in May.

Asked why Collins took so much money from health care interests, Collins' political adviser, Christopher M. Grant, said it's only natural for such PACs to do so.

"They want to make sure they are supporting lawmakers who support pro-growth, pro-worker policies," Grant said.

Grant also acknowledged that Collins has ramped up his fundraising in anticipation of a more substantive threat in the 2018 election. The Democratic Congressional Campaign announced early this year that it is targeting Collins, and one Democrat, Erin Cole, already announced she will challenge Collins next year.She is a military veteran and former state and federal government official.

Collins and New York Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo have clashed repeatedly over health care and other issues, and Cuomo already said he's teaming with Democratic Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi to try to defeat several New York Republicans, including Collins.

"We know what that entails, and we're prepared for the fight," Grant said.

Collins starts off well prepared, with a campaign chest of $1.1 million as of June 30.

That's considerably more than Reed, who raised significantly more than Collins in the first half of the year.

Reed finances

Reed -- whohas had to fight off serious challenges in the last three elections -- spent far more campaign money than Collins or Higgins. That's because Reed, unlike the others, maintains a year-round campaign operation, meaning he spent much of the money he raised and didn't bank his money the way Collins and Higgins did.

Just as Collins took a large share of his money from a special interest that's tied to the committee he serves on, so did Reed. A member of the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee, Reed, took more than a quarter of his PAC money from the finance and insurance industries, which are keenly interested in tax reform legislation that i set to be developed in that committee later this year.

Reed's campaign manager, Nicholas Weinstein, said there never is any connection between the money Reed takes and the positions he takes on the issues.

"It's not going to affect what his decisions are," Weinstein said. "He bases his decisions on the interests of the people of the 23rd congressional district."

Reed raised 30 percent more money in the first six months of the year than he did two years earlier, and Weinstein said it's partly because of the Corning Republican's involvement in the Problem Solvers Caucus, a bipartisan group that is trying to break through the gridlock that has gripped Congress this year.

"That has gotten us attention from across the table and across the country," Weinstein said.

Higgins finances

Meantime, Higgins has enjoyed a smaller increase in fundraising, and an unusually high share of it -- 24 percent -- came from the same kind of finance and insurance industry PACs that have funded Reed for years.

Higgins raised more from the financial industry in the first six months of the year than he did in the previous two years combined, and it's all because he just rejoined the Ways and Means Committee after six years on other panels. He also joined the House Budget Committee.

"Different committee memberships expose members of Congress to different people, and given Brian's move to the Ways and Means and Budget committees, that's likely what's happened here," said Chuck Eaton, Higgins chief of staff. "The same thing happened back in 2009 when he served on Ways and Means, so this really isn't much of a surprise."

The figures prove that Eaton is right. Higgins' fundraising from financial interests doubled in the 2010 election cycle, when he served on Ways and Means, and shrunk in half in 2012 after he left the committee.

Higgins still gets more of his PAC money from organized labor than from any other source, while Collins and Reed get far less from unions.

The three Western New York lawmakers have one thing in common in terms of their fundraising. They don't get much money from average voters. All three got more than half their money from PACs and between 37 and 44 percent from big-money individual donors.

Higgins got 8 percent of his campaign donations for the first half of the year from small donors. Collins received 3 percent of his campaign money from small individual contributors, and Reed got just 2 percent from such people.

Original post:

Collins sharply boosts fundraising, and health care interests lead the way - Buffalo News

Democrats want health care on the federal government tab and will never raise the taxes needed to actually pay for state-of-the-art health care for all.

Just look at Medicare today costing the federal government some $600 billion per year (only for 50 million Americans) but only direct revenues raised in taxation coming in around $300 billion a year or so. Democrats will never raise taxes high enough to pay for major social programs and keep raising such taxes each year as automatic benefits kick in without a vote from anyone. If it costs $600 billion for 50 million people, how much will it cost for 320 million Americans, and what level of direct taxation is needed to achieve that worthy goal of health care for all but not the high taxes?

But the GOP is just as bad coming from the opposite end of solutions. They will scale back federal benefits and let market forces prevail. They wont acknowledge that such tricks cause death, suffering, grave financial hardships, etc. They also ignore the simple fact that the majority of Americans now think health care is a right. Agree or disagree, that is what the country wants, and it is hard to resist in a democracy.

The now infamous Affordable Care Act quickly became very unpopular because it used government power to force people to buy something. There goes an important piece of freedom for sure. But it has become anything but affordable as well. No blue collar worker can afford $3,000 per year premiums and a $5,000 per year deductible.

Clearly something must be done, and bipartisan debate is the only way to get there. So thank you, Sen. John McCain, for forcing such a path down the throats of both parties. I dont believe that was particularly courageous, but it sure was the next right thing to do. The last thing we need is another single-party health care program.

Remember as well, Democrats, your own Bernie Sanders recently stated No one knows the cost when asked how much federal money would be needed to implement his very liberal health care for all legislation. He was honest for sure. That also gives him an out as if no one knows the cost then no one can demand a tax increase to pay for his utopian dreams. But know them or not, huge additional costs to our federal government are sure to come in just like the tide.

Here you go, Americans. Demand health care for all, and politicians will give it to you. But learn to put up with much higher taxes to go along with it if politicians have any sense. As health care costs continue to rise, expect annual, automatic tax increasesagain if politicians have any sense. Then vote in those who will lower taxes and try again for something less than health care for all or at least state-of-the-art health care for all.

While the ensuing debate takes place, I hope politicians can realize that only limited health care for all is possible, financially, even in the richest country in the world. Start with paying for preventive care (only) for all along with hospice care for all, not a nickel for personal expense to die with dignity and pain free. Then add in all the treatments possible as well until the taxes on all Americans go so high that the country will have reached that limit of high taxes as determined by the majority.

Remember, if you only increase taxes on some of the people, the others will call for more and more health care. To make this approach doable, all Americans must feel the pain of very high taxes and very limited or nonexistent economic growth, neither of which are part of the American Dream.

Anson Burlingame lives in Joplin.

See original here:

Anson Burlingame: Moving forward on health care - Joplin Globe

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnellMitch McConnellOvernight Finance: Trump signs Russia sanctions bill, rips Congress | Trump plan would cut legal immigration | Senate confirms labor board pick | House Budget chair running for governor | Regulator takes step to change 'Volcker Rule' House Dem on Statue of Liberty: 'She persisted' Senate GOP eyes end to August session MORE (R-Ky.) looked to rally Republicans on Saturday in the wake of the Senate GOP's failure to pass an ObamaCare repeal bill last week.

I choose not to dwell on situations where we come up a little bit short, McConnell said during a surprise appearance ata Republican event in Kentucky, according to local radio station WFPL.

Even on the night when we came up one vote short of our dream to repeal and replace Obamacare, heres the first thing I thought about: feel better, Hillary ClintonHillary Rodham ClintonCongress wants Trump Jr. phone records related to Russia meeting Zuckerberg hires top Clinton pollster amid rumors of presidential run: report Democrats new 'Better Deal' comes up short for people of color MORE could be president," he added.

ADVERTISEMENT

McConnell's comments come as lawmakers have returned to their home districts for the August recess after Senate GOPefforts to fulfill their seven-year campaign promise to repeal and replaceObamaCare collapsed last week in the Senate, with a scaled-down repeal bill narrowly failing.

President Trump has recently pushed Senate Republicans to abolish the legislative filibuster and bring back efforts to repeal and replace the 2010 healthcare law, however Republicansappear poised to move onto other issues such as tax reform.

See the rest here:

McConnell on healthcare failure: 'Feel better, Hillary Clinton could be president' - The Hill

"My fellow conservatives, let me be clear. This ain't over. This ain't over by a long shot," Pence said. "And President Trump and I are absolutely committed to keep our promise to the American people. We were not elected to save Obamacare -- we were elected to repeal and replace it."

Pence was speaking at Young America's Foundation's annual National Conservative Student Conference a little over a week after the Republican-led Obamacare replacement proposal failed in dramatic fashion in the Senate.

Hours before Pence's speech, President Trump had left the nation's capital for a 17-day working vacation at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, and the Senate had left for its August recess.

Yet the vice president assured the conservative audience that the GOP's seven-year campaign to repeal the Affordable Care Act would continue.

"Last week it was clear that the Senate wasn't quite ready to keep that promise to the American people when they fell one vote short of moving forward on a bill to repeal and replace this disastrous policy," Pence said.

Read more here:

Pence on health care: 'It ain't over' - CNN International

Aug. 5, 2017, 3:09 p.m.

Over the shouts of a lone heckler at a packed Livermore town hall, Northern California Rep. Eric Swalwell on Saturday once more called for the creation of an independent commission to investigate Russian interference in the 2016 election.

If we do anything, we should make sure that the 2018 election is more secure than the 2016 election, Swalwellsaid, drawing a round of applause from the audience.

Roughly 500 people filled the seats at a Granada High School gym, many of whomwere attending a town hall for the first time amid concerns over what they said they view asa tense and divisive political climate in Washington. The event was organized to address questions from constituents about jobs, healthcareand what Swalwellcalled efforts to protect democracy.

It came daysafter special counsel Robert S. Mueller IIIconvened a criminal grand jury to investigate the presidential election, focusing on Donald Trump Jr.s meeting with a Russian lawyer who promised damaging information about Hillary Clinton.

Questions over the Russia probeand GOP efforts to kill the Affordable Care Act dominated the discussion.

Swalwell, a Democrat from Dublin who serves on the House Intelligence Committee, hasstarted a web page detailing the alleged Russian tiesof Trump administration officials. Hesaid Mueller's investigation did not eliminate the need for an independent commission.

The congressman said there was no evidence Russian actors had changed votes. But intelligence reports had shown President Vladimir Putin influenced the election through "a multifaceted attack" that hesaid included hacked emails and the spread of fake news throughsocial media trolls.

What we know the Russians did do is that they went into a number of state election voter databases, he said. We dont know why. You could speculate that they wanted to show that they could at least get in, and that it would sow discord or sow doubt when the result came out.

The event waslargely free of the protests and rambunctious tactics that have overtaken recent townhalls in California. Oneman in the audience shouted questions at Swalwell as he spoke about Russian interference, yelling, "Get over it. He won." But he was soon silenced by the audience.

Swalwellalso fielded questions about his efforts to ease college debt and build the Future Forum, a group of young Democratic members of Congress focused on student loan debt and homeownership.

On healthcare, Swalwell called for a "Medicare for all" system, saying lawmakers needed to continue to expand access and reduce costs. Constituents quizzed him on who would pay for such a plan.

Here is the original post:

Questions over Russia, healthcare dominate Rep. Eric Swalwell's town hall at Livermore high school - Los Angeles Times

The clock is ticking for action on the Affordable Care Act following last month's failure to repeal and replace President Obama's signature legislation.

While seated at a corner table at Garden of Eatin restaurant in Levittown on Wednesday afternoon, Congressman Brian Fitzpatrick, R-8, of Middletown, said he recognized the sense of urgency on stabilizing the individual markets.

That's why the bipartisan House Problem Solvers Caucus released earlier this week its five-point proposal to fix parts of the ACA, Fitzpatrick said.

"That was the purpose of the proposal, to inject a sense of urgency," Fitzpatrick said. "This is our temporary, bipartisan fix until we get a permanent solution."

A couple days into Congress' August recess, Fitzpatrick had just spent an hour answering questions on the air at Levittown's WBCB radio station. The Garden of Eatin is a favorite spot for Fitzpatrick, who said he regularly stops in on Sundays after church.

The post-lunch, pre-dinner Wednesday afternoon left a sparsely filled, quiet restaurant as Fitzpatrick touched on several topics between bites of his garden salad, washed down with a cup of coffee.

Millions of Americans who rely on the ACA to guarantee coverage for pre-existing conditions or expanded Medicaid payments to help cover costs were relieved when the Senate failed in its attempt to pass a repeal bill. However, President Trump has not made it clear if he will allow to go unchallenged the payment of cost-sharing reimbursements to insurance companies participating in the individual exchanges.

That uncertainty has insurance companies looking at possible rate hikes for the 2018 market, and either the White House or Congress has until the end of September to clear everything up.

Stabilizing the cost-sharing reimbursements is the top priority in the Problem Solvers Caucus' proposal, and Republican Sen. Lamar Alexander, of Tennessee, chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, has made it clear the reimbursements will be item number one when he convenes bipartisan committee hearings on health care the week of Sept. 4.

"The individual marketplace is what needs to be rescued right now," Fitzpatrick said. "The actuaries in these companies need to start pricing out their products. They are threatening to increase premiums, in some cases up to 30 percent. We can't allow that to happen."

Fitzpatrick seemed hopeful after months of partisan bickering on the future of the ACA that the settling dust has allowed a bipartisan solution to take shape. The people on the extreme wings of either party are never going to agree on legislation, Fitzpatrick said, but people he describes as "reasonable folks" have embraced the proposal.

"I'm a big believer in the need to fix the system," Fitzpatrick said. "We all need a health care system that works. We're all going to get old, we're all going to get sick and we're all going to get injured. We need a health care system that's low-cost, high-quality and has expanded access."

Bipartisanship was a running theme during his first congressional election campaign, and Fitzpatrick says he has tried to adhere to that during his first seven months in office. He partnered with Democratic Congressman Brendan Boyle in the neighboring 13th District, in Northeast Philadelphia and Montgomery County, to lobby for more attention paid to the issue of perfluorinated chemicals contaminating the water supply in communities in Bucks and Montgomery counties.

They have attached three amendments to the latest National Defense Authorization Act that requires the Department of Defense to partner with local governments and provide health screenings in neighborhoods close to the air bases where firefighting compounds containing PFCs were used. The amendments also call for the Department of Defense to pay for a health study into the long-term effects of PFCs and provide an update on the department's progress developing an alternative firefighting foam that does not use the perfluorinatedchemicals PFOS and PFOA.

"We passed the House version, and the Senate will pass its own version, and then we will go into conference," said Fitzpatrick. "Senators (Bob) Casey and (Pat) Toomey have been supportive, so I feel confident we'll get these in the final draft. We'll get in as many as we can."

Fitzpatrick is also looking forward to the return of regular order to Congress as the focus shifts to tax reform. The drafting of the House and Senate bills occurred mostly behind closed doors, with little time spent in committees or public hearings on the legislation.

A group of Republican legislators from Congress and the executive branch has started putting together a framework for tax reform. Last week, the group, dubbed the Big Six, ruled out a border adjustment tax from the reform package. Once completed, the legislation will go to the House for normal committee review and hearings, Fitzpatrick said.

"It will make its way through the Ways and Means committee," Fitzpatrick said. "Then we'll start the amendment process on the floor of the House. My big thing is that it should go through regular order and that there be hearings where everybody who is a stakeholder has a chance to be heard. Their input needs to be part of the legislative package."

Any reforms would need to include cuts to both individuals and corporations, Fitzpatrick said. The current corporate tax rate of 35 percent is one of the highest in the world and keeps the U.S. from being competitive with other countries, he said. There needs to be a "sweet spot" where the tax is low enough to be competitive, but not so low that will bleed tax revenue.

Fitzpatrick supports reducing income tax brackets from seven to three and eliminating deductions and loopholes. The Internal Revenue code is a mess, he said, weighing in at 70,000 pages of costly bureaucracy.

"CPAs like myself had a hard time navigating that," said Fitzpatrick. "Unless they have a tax attorney that can handle the complex system, the average person gets crushed. Bringing down the marginal rates and getting rid of the special interest deductions and loopholes, coupled with regulatory reform and a balanced budget amendment, are key to growing the economy."

See the original post:

Fitzpatrick pushes bipartisanship for health care fix - Bucks County Courier Times

During a recent trip back to the outskirts of his hometown of Raqqa, Abu Ismail saw that life in the city, which over the past few years has become the de-facto capital of ISIS in Syria, is now nothing like it was when he left in 2013.

Abu Ismail, 54, was told by residents who had just fled the predominantly Sunni city that they had no clean water inside instead, they had to drink unsanitary water from wells. Some went without food for days, while others boiled grape leaves and had the soup for dinner. The lack of nutrition and clean water is making many civilians sick, while some sustain injuries from bullets and explosions in the beleaguered city -- and all have little or no access to healthcare, he said.

Some volunteer doctors from Raqqa have opened clinics for people inside, but there are no hospitals or medical centers or anything, and water and electricity is cut off, Abu Ismail, an activist who now lives in Turkey, told ABC News.

A few weeks ago, Abu Ismail visited the northwestern outskirts of Raqqa to see his brother for the first time in four years. During his trip, he said residents who had just left Raqqa told him that only one hospital in the northern Syrian city remains partially functioning. And ISIS fighters have first priority there.

If a child and an ISIS fighter are wounded, they will treat the ISIS fighter instead of the child, said Abu Ismail -- which, meaning "father of Ismail," is a nickname he goes by. He uses the name out of fear of potential repercussions he may face for traveling back into the Raqqa area.

The U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) -- which is dominated by Kurdish People's Protection Units militia, also known as YPG -- launched its campaign to seize Raqqa from ISIS in early June. About 45 percent of the city is now under SDF control, according to Col. Ryan Dillon, spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition fighting ISIS in Iraq and Syria. As the frontline tightens around the estimated 20,000-50,000 residents still living inside Raqqa, civilians are being injured and killed.

Given the danger on the ground and lack of access to Raqqa, its difficult to determine the state of the security and humanitarian situation. But the World Health Organization (WHO) reports that some health workers who recently fled the city say that all hospitals and health centers there are now out of service. In addition to injuries from coalition airstrikes and sniper fire, civilians in Raqqa are at risk of waterborne epidemic diseases such as cholera and hepatitis, as theyve had no access to clean drinking water for 48 days, the WHO said.

In addition, the majority of local physicians as well as the other health workers have fled the city, and the medicines are quite scarce, and their prices are excessive, a WHO spokesperson told ABC News.

Since June, the organization Doctors Without Borders, commonly known by its French acronym MSF, said it has treated more than 400 patients from Raqqa and surrounding villages. Most patients are civilians with injuries caused by improvised explosive devices, landmines, unexploded ordnance, shrapnel and gunshot wounds, MSF said.

Some of MSF's patients were civilians who sustained wounds upon returning to their old neighborhoods after fighting there ended, said Vanessa Cramond, MSFs medical coordinator in Northern Syria.

A Raqqa-based family had returned to their home and was tidying up the house after being away for a long time. The familys two teenage girls were making the bed when a device placed either in or under the bed exploded, killing one sister immediately and injuring the other critically, Cramond said. And last week, a young boy picked up an unexploded ordinance and brought it home, not knowing what it was. The device detonated, killing two of his immediate family members and injuring the whole family, she said.

I think its just the precariousness of that situation and how devastating it is for the whole family just going about their daily business, Cramond told ABC News via phone during a recent trip to Northern Syria. That is a relative norm, unfortunately, as war has become normal for so many people in Raqqa.

Cramond said she believes the level of access to healthcare inside Raqqa changes from moment to moment sometimes people have more freedom to walk around and seek care than at other times. Some of the residents MSF has treated over the past months actually seemed to have received a good level of care inside Raqqa, she said, while other times injuries were addressed too late.

We see people with shrapnel inside them from the impact of a blast so the wound is really infected, and that often means that we see people who need to be amputated because were seeing them very much after the injuries occurred and were unable to salvage them, Cramond said.

MSFs team on the ground has not seen patients with ongoing health issues such as uncontrolled asthma, diabetes, and heart disease, said Cramond, and the number of patients they do see is relatively small.

That worries us, she said, adding that this tells her that many civilians are unable to reach medical centers, or dont know where to go for necessary treatments and surgeries.

Hodeb Shahada, an activist who fled Raqqa for Turkey about a year and a half ago, said he was in touch with some of his friends who have remained in the city, until they decided to flee in mid-July. When they had access to the internet inside Raqqa, they would send him voice recordings about what life is like inside. They told him that only three to four doctors remained in the only hospital that was partially functioning. Some residents died on their way to seek treatment.

Everything that moves in the street is a target, so at the end no one dares to take people to the hospital, Shahada told ABC News.

Shahadas friends told him about an ambulance worker who had lost his wife after their home was hit by an airstrike. The worker later tried to help four boys who were injured after a different strike hit their home, but he was killed when his vehicle was also struck.

The cause of many of the issues Raqqas residents are facing, however, is the lack of clean water, Shahada said.

People drink bad water from wells and it leads to diseases. Some are killed on their way to get water, he said.

Some civilians have reportedly died because they were caught in the crossfire on their way to get water from the Euphrates river, the WHO said.

The ongoing military campaign in Raqqa means that the WHO doesnt have access to send health teams into the city. For the first time in three years, the WHO on Tuesday delivered medicine and medical supplies -- enough for 150,000 treatments to Al-Qamishli, northeast of Raqqa, where some residents displaced from Raqqa live in temporary camps.

More than 200,000 people have fled their homes around Raqqa since April 1, according to the United Nations. In 2004, Raqqa was the sixth largest city in Syria, with a population of 220,000.

But not everyone wants to flee, Cramond said. While its dangerous to live inside Raqqa, getting out is also unsafe. A number of residents have been killed while fleeing.

Abu Ismail says that his brother is one of those who want to stay. His brother had moved from the city of Raqqa to what was once the family's vacation house, about 12 miles away from the city, in an area that is now controlled by the SDF, but was ISIS-held. Abu Ismail offered to try to bring his brother, his wife and children to Turkey.

"But my brother said 'I stayed in Raqqa under ISIS for two and a half years. We endured under ISIS, so we can take it a little longer,'" Abu Ismail said.

"I would ask people I met in the area, 'why didn't you leave two months ago?' he said. They responded that they hadn't expected that the battle would last this long. People also don't like to stay in refugee camps. Some say that they'd rather die in their homes."

Excerpt from:

Civilians trapped in Raqqa with little access to urgently needed healthcare, organizations warn - ABC News

Republicans haven't stopped targeting Democrats on healthcare even after their failure to repeal Obamacare.

The National Republican Congressional Committee, the House GOP campaign arm, is running digital ads in eight states hitting Democrats for supporting the creation of what is called a single-payer healthcare system. Democrats have been adopting support for such a government-run system in the U.S. with increasing frequency, a position to the left of Obamacare and closer to the socialized medicine seen in other countries.

House Republicans believe the position could hurt Democratic candidates in 2018, despite their party's failure to replace former President Barack Obama's healthcare law after years of promising, not to mention infighting, over what to do next to address America's ailing medical system.

Republican insiders concede the oddity of running on healthcare given their paralysis on the issue. But they say internal polling has revealed Democrats are vulnerable on single-payer in targeted districts.

"We like the contrast between our bill and single-payer. The ads write themselves, pulling all these Democratic candidates in their huge primaries left and makes them unelectable in a general," a Republican operative said, referring to GOP legislation to partially repeal Obamacare that passed the House but stalled in the Senate.

The operative, who has viewed the polling but declined to disclose its findings, said surveys in July showed that in competitive House districts, "when both the GOP healthcare proposal and single-payer proposal were described to respondents, respondents disapproved of single-payer in stronger numbers."

The NRCC is investing six figures to run the digital ad "Control" in California, New York, Pennsylvania, Nebraska, Colorado, Florida, Minnesota, and Virginia. The attack features House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and the perils of putting healthcare under government control. The spot includes news clips of Charlie Gard, a since-deceased baby born with severe birth defects, whose parents fought with the British government over whether the country's government health service would allow the child access to potentially life-saving treatment.

"Big government has destroyed the American healthcare system as we know it. But it gets worse," the spot's voiceover says. "A new plan brought to you by the same Democrats who gave us Obamacare."

"Tell Nancy Pelosi and California Democrats we can't afford single-payer healthcare," the voiceover says, upon the ad's conclusion. Democrats say the spot is laughable given the Republicans recent healthcare stumbles. However, they're quick to point out that not all Democratic candidates will embrace single-payer healthcare. Some will and some won't, depending on the district they're running in.

"Republicans have lost all credibility on healthcare with this repeal disaster," said Tyler Law, spokesman for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the party's House campaign organization. "To think they can keep talking about healthcare and have that be a winning issue heading into the midterms, they're sorely mistaken."

Democrats need to win a net of 24 seats to win back the House majority.

The American Health Care Act cleared the House in late spring, but the GOP's' Obamacare repeal effort is on the fritz indefinitely after legislation pushed by Senate Republicans fell one vote short of passage in late July. That comes as President Trump's job approval numbers have hit record lows.

The effort unfolded over seven months, during which the Affordable Care Act's low approval numbers improved to the point where the law is now more popular than unpopular for the first time since it was enacted in 2010. Plus, the public has given a resounding thumbs down to the Republican alternatives.

That could give Democrats the advantage on healthcare, after losing big to the GOP in three of the last four elections partly because of public dissatisfaction with Obamacare.

But Republicans are staying on offense, arguing that the Democrats' leftward lurch on the issue to embrace a government-run system opens a new line of attack for the GOP. Republicans hope they can force the issue to be one that Democrats fight over in party primaries next year.

"European-style single-payer healthcare is the new litmus test in the Democratic Party," NRCC spokesman Matt Gorman said in a statement. "Every day from today until Election Day, Democrats will be forced to answer whether they support this disastrous plan..."

View original post here:

Republicans attack Democrats on government-run healthcare after Obamacare repeal failure - Washington Examiner

Ransomware and hacking incidents plagued2016, and this year is no different, with the latest Protenus Breach Barometer midyear report finding that 2017 is on pace to exceed last years rate of one breach per day.

So far this year, the healthcare sector has reported 233 breach incidents to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, state attorney generals and media. More than 3.16 million patient records have been breached.

[Join Your Peers at HIMSS Healthcare Security Forum! Register Today]

Compiled in collaboration with Dissent from DataBreaches, the report analyzed 193 of the incidents for which it had data. Breaches have remained steady in the last six months outside of June, which saw a spike with 52 incidents. And March saw the most patients affected, with 1,360,961 records breached.

The healthcare sector will only stop being so vulnerable when the advances in data collection, sharing and analytics are matched with similar advances in our understanding of how to protect patient data, said Protenus Cofounder and President Robert Lord.

Healthcare has invested tens of billions of dollars in deploying systems to leverage data to improve patient outcomes - and appropriately so, he continued. But we still have massive problems with the abuse of that data and those systems.

So what are the biggest threats plaguing healthcare in 2017? Insiders and hackers.

Hacking accounted for 75 breaches this year, with 1,684,904 patient records impacted. Malware and ransomware were specifically mentioned in 29 of these incidents, but the report found there were many additional incidents where malware was reported as hacking or an IT incident.

Officials expect more organizations to report ransomware attacks this year, as HHS updated its ransomware reporting requirements in Aug. 2016. The update places the burden of proof on the provider to demonstrate data remained inaccessible or werent exfiltrated.

Insiders are also remaining a constant challenge for healthcare, accounting for 96 incidents or 41 percent of data breaches this year so far. More than 1.17 million patient records were breached by insider error or wrongdoing.

Wrongdoing is rife to cause significant damage, as its rarely detected immediately. For example, Anthem reported this week an employee of its Medicare insurance coordination services vendor was stealing and misusing Medicaid member data from as early as July 2016. The breach wasnt found until April.

Another issue plaguing the healthcare sector is that other types of external attacks have been underreported or unreported. Thousands of databases in all sectors have been wiped or the data were exfiltrated. The report found that only few of these were reported to HHS.

The FBI has also reported that these ransacking incidents or targeted databases arent being reported.

Healthcare executives, at a fundamental level, should stop thinking about security and privacy as a cost center and more as a strategic pillar of their organization, said Lord. We've continued to see increased awareness and incremental improvements, but not the needed dramatic leap forward.

To Lord, the leap will be driven by CISOs and Chief Privacy Officers, dramatically increasing investment in these areas to match other industries and leveraging the use of advanced analytics to detect inappropriate uses of patient data.

A culture of trust, comprised of dual pillars of privacy and security, must come from the highest levels of the organization.

Twitter:@JessieFDavis Email the writer: jessica.davis@himssmedia.com

Like Healthcare IT News on Facebook and LinkedIn

Original post:

Insiders, hackers causing bulk of 2017 healthcare data breaches - Healthcare IT News

Tom Brenner New York Times Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., the Senates third-ranking Republican, spoke out this week about continuing to provide cost-sharing reductions (CSRs), that is, financial assistance to consumers struggling with high health insurance deductibles and other expenses.

A powerful South Dakota Republican senator merits credit for throwing his support behind a key effort to stabilize the Affordable Care Act after the failed but disruptive congressional push to repeal it.

Early this week, South Dakotas John Thune, the Senates third-ranking Republican, spoke out publicly in favor of funding a critical component of former President Barack Obamas health care law: its financial assistance to consumers struggling with high health insurance deductibles and other expenses. While Thune didnt sound overly enthusiastic, his pragmatic call to fund this consumer-friendly aid known as cost-sharing reductions, or CSRs clearly warns the Trump administration against taking action to undermine the insurance marketplace.

Its a particularly timely message one that Minnesotas three influential GOP House members should echo as Republican efforts to replace the ACA stall indefinitely. The inaction has stoked the ire of President Donald Trump, who campaigned on swiftly repealing Obamacare. There are understandable concerns that Trump appointees could pursue measures to sabotage the law to placate the angry Oval Office occupant.

Read the original:

Put consumers first by stabilizing, not sabotaging, health care law - Minneapolis Star Tribune

A temporary replacement has been appointed for the top executive job at Nash UNC Health Care.

Dr. Ian B. Buchanan will serve as interim CEO for the hospital, stepping in for Larry Chewning, who was asked to leave by the hospitals Board of Commissioners in July and allowed to announce his retirement.

Our team is looking forward to working with Dr. Buchanan and our partners at UNC Health Care to continue improving the care and service we provide to the people of Nash County and the region, said hospital board Chairman Jim Lilley.

A national search is underway to find a replacement for Chewning, who will officially begin his retirement in September. He has served as CEO for the past decade. Chewning became an employee of UNC Health Care System after spearheading the partnership with UNC Health Care in 2014.

As part of the agreement, UNC provides Nash with a CEO, Alan Wolf, spokesman for UNC Health Care Systems, previously told the Telegram.

Chewning presided over a period of great expansion at the hospital with several new treatment centers built. In recent months, however, the hospital has lost money and received poor patient safety ratings.

The search process is being led by a CEO Search Committee composed of members of the local hospital board, said Jeff Hedgepeth, the hospital's director of public relations and marketing.

Buchanan will continue to serve as chief research officer for the UNC Health Care System and as senior vice president of operations at UNC Medical Center in Chapel Hill. He also serves the state as a member of the N.C. Advisory Committee on Cancer Coordination and Control.

Buchanan has worked with the Nash hospital leadership team in recent years on several initiatives related to UNC Cancer Care at Nash.

In addition to the Cancer Care programs, I am excited to begin working more closely with the larger team at Nash and in getting to know both our patients and the community, Buchanan said.

Buchanan is a graduate of the UNC School of Medicine and earned a masters degree from the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health. He joined UNC Health Care in 2006, working in the Performance Improvement Department at UNC Medical Center, where he was responsible for the Core Measures reporting initiative.

Since then, Buchanan has served as the associate vice president for Oncology Services, as vice president for Cancer and Childrens Services, and as vice chairman for Clinical Integration within the UNC Department of Pediatrics.

Chewning is only the third CEO of the hospital since it opened nearly 50 years ago. He replaced Rick Toomey, who replaced long-time CEO Bryant Aldridge.

More here:

Nash UNC Health Care board names interim CEO - Rocky Mount Telegram

Trumps let Obamacare implode is a cruel, nihilistic policy that does nothing to solve the real problems in health care.

PRESIDENT Donald Trumps let Obamacare implode strategy should come with a flashing red warning: If you break it, you own it.

Of course, it is not a political strategy. Its a talking point aimed at the hardest base of the GOP. As a policy, it is a prescription for escalating health-care costs and devastation to already fragile rural economies as a legion of newly uninsured people, many of them in Trump-voting counties, demand care from hospitals that cannot afford a spike in charity care.

The U.S. Senates failure to repeal Obamacare last week does not end the debate about the Affordable Care Act. Nor should it. The ACA has obvious flaws acknowledged by its own supporters. Fixing them, with a bipartisan and deliberative approach, would be a priority if the Republican caucus had more sensible minds like Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska. They joined Sen. John McCain to rebuke the repeal strategy.

A glimmer of hope comes from U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, who said he will work with Washingtons Sen. Patty Murray on a bipartisan, if temporary, solution. The ranking member of the committee, Murray welcomed the overture, which includes hearings and a proposal to extend payments to insurers through 2018.

Trump, nonetheless, acts like a cruel nihilist in threatening the foundations of the Affordable Care Act. Through executive power, he could stop payment on the estimated $7 billion in cost-sharing subsidies for low- and moderate-income buyers of health insurance. That could effectively make health insurance unaffordable for up to 10 million people.

He has other levers, including monkeying around with the Medicaid expansion, which helped drop Washington states uninsured rate to 7 percent, with the steepest drops in counties in this state that Trump won. He should stop threatening to harm his base, and his base should demand rational governance.

In the absence of constructive action from the White House, Washington states health-care leadership must buckle down for a bumpy ride. Insurance Commissioner Mike Kreidler said he is most concerned that rural counties will be left with no insurer for individual plans, a scenario barely avoided this year. Several counties have only one provider.

Kreidler is working on several contingency options, including expanded use of a high-risk insurance pool that could step in for unusually high-cost illnesses and for individuals. He is also exploring opening a public option if counties were left with no private insurer, using the insurance pool for state employees.

This intriguing idea deserves a full vetting, because Kreidler sees the current trajectory on health insurance on the individual market ending with a crash. Washington has seen that before, nearly two decades ago, and it was chaos.

Trumps disinterest in solving the big problems of health care including cost and access is remarkable because it is so callous. Instead of merely working to score political points off the Obama legacy, Trump and the GOP-led Congress need to work with Democrats and fix, not toss, the Affordable Care Act.

See the rest here:

Glimmers of hope amid president's health-care callousness - The Seattle Times

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., joined by fellow Senate Republicans, holds a news conference on Capitol Hill on Tuesday, Aug. 1, 2017. J. Scott Applewhite/AP hide caption

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., joined by fellow Senate Republicans, holds a news conference on Capitol Hill on Tuesday, Aug. 1, 2017.

The White House says the fight over health care is not over, but on Capitol Hill, Republicans are ready to move on.

"The president isn't giving up on health care and neither should the Senate," Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney declared on CNN on Wednesday.

On the Senate floor that same morning, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, of Kentucky, was already focused elsewhere.

"Comprehensive tax reform represents the single most important action we can take now to grow the economy and help middle-class families get ahead," McConnell said. He added that the Republican Party has a "once-in-a-generation opportunity" to redesign the nation's tax laws.

McConnell has not publicly declared the Republican effort to "repeal and replace" the Affordable Care Act over, but the mood on Capitol Hill has decidedly shifted to the next legislative battle: cutting taxes.

The same day the health care bill collapsed last week, the "Big Six" negotiators announced a very broad outline of what Republicans hope to achieve with a tax overhaul.

"The goal is a plan that reduces tax rates as much as possible," read a statement by McConnell, House Speaker Paul Ryan, House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady, R-Texas, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, and National Economic Council Director Gary Cohn.

The group has been meeting privately for months to sketch out a game plan on tax legislation. Those meetings also ultimately scuttled Ryan's original hopes of including a controversial new tax on imports that he had hoped would raise new revenue to pay for cuts elsewhere.

Republicans are hopeful that a tax bill will be an easier lift than health care, and lawmakers say the pressure to deliver tax legislation has intensified after failing on long-promised health care legislation.

While the party never really coalesced around an alternative to the Affordable Care Act, every Republican in Congress supports tax cuts.

Some of the broad proposals include reducing the number of personal income tax brackets, and lowering the corporate rate as low as 15 percent which the president has called for in the past.

The tough questions about what those rates will be, if or how tax cuts will be paid for and what process Republicans will use to get the legislation through Congress remain unanswered.

The last major federal tax overhaul of this scale was in 1986, under President Reagan, who signed a bipartisan bill that has become a tale of Washington folklore featuring, for example, a final deal worked out over two pitchers of beer at a Capitol Hill pub.

But, the prospect of a bipartisan bill this time fizzled quickly earlier this week.

Forty-five Senate Democrats sent a letter to McConnell outlining the conditions that needed to be met for them to work with Republicans on a tax bill: no tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans and no cuts to entitlement programs to pay for tax cuts.

McConnell quickly declared that offer a non-starter, and indicated Republicans will use the same budget reconciliation process they deployed on health care to skirt the Senate filibuster and try to pass a bill with 51 votes.

Democrats are skeptical Republicans can pull that off with a tax overhaul.

"The question will be: Are they going to repeat the mistake of health care where they said they want to try to do tax reform just with Republicans?" said Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., "If they use reconciliation they're not going to have a very easy path. If they think health care is hard, they have not seen anything in terms of how you deal with the complexity of tax reform."

The White House is demanding an aggressive schedule. Mnuchin this week said Trump would like to sign a bill by Thanksgiving.

Congressional Republicans are using the August recess to drum up support for their ideas, including an event at the Reagan Ranch in California on Aug. 16.

The Senate wrapped up its pre-recess business Thursday. So both chambers are on August recess until after Labor Day.

Already, staff is working on draft legislation. House and Senate lawmakers say they hope to release those drafts in September and start having open committee hearings.

Under this timeline, the House would vote in October, and the Senate would follow suit in November and send the bill to the president.

"This won't be an easy process, but the people we represent are depending on us for help. Now is the time to deliver tax reform, and I look forward to working with my colleagues to accomplish it," McConnell said.

Whether or not Republicans can pass a tax bill and whether or not their voters will forgive them for not passing a health care bill are two questions that will hang over the GOP majority for the rest of 2017.

See more here:

After Health Care Collapse, GOP Seeks Redemption With Tax Cuts - NPR

But as Republican Sens. Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski sat side-by-side in an exclusive joint interview with CNN's Dana Bash on Thursday, they steadfastly stood by their decisions to buck their own party's recent push on health care.

The two women reflected on last week's turbulent series of events and their votes that ultimately led to the suspenseful downfall of Republican efforts to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act.

"It's always hard not to be a member of the team. There's lots of pressure to do that," said Collins, a four-term senator from Maine. "But in the end, I have to do what I think is right. And that's what I did in this case."

Ticking off a list of the pressures senators face -- "repercussion from party, a tweet from the President, backlash from your leadership" -- Murkowski, a three-term senator from Alaska, argued that she and her colleagues shouldn't have to feel "motivated or discouraged" from doing what they feel is right for their respective states.

Murkowski knows firsthand the impact of a tweet from the President. A day after she and Collins were the only two senators to oppose a procedural vote on health care last week, President Donald Trump fired off a tweet singling out Murkowski, saying she "really let the Republicans, and our country, down."

The senator said that tweet also came a day after the President personally spoke to her over the phone. Asked if she felt intimidated by their conversations, Murkowski declined to get specific. "I will just say that the President and I had a very direct call."

She also received a call from Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, a person who holds enormous sway in a state like Alaska, to urge Murkowski to support the President on health care.

Zinke is now being investigated by the department's inspector general over whether the secretary threatened Alaska's economic development in the phone call. Responding to news of the preliminary probe, Murkowski told Bash that she did not interpret the phone call as a "threat" but that "he was merely delivering a message."

Pressed on whether Zinke mentioned economic development in the call, Murkowski simply stated the focus was on health care. "What he mentioned was that the President was very -- that the health care bill was very important to the President," she said.

Before last week's health care votes, Murkowski had been warning Trump that she was not going to vote by party line on the issue. Earlier last month at the White House, at a meeting between Republican senators and Trump on health care, Murkowski said she told the President in front her colleagues that she wasn't necessarily going to back whatever Republicans ended up proposing. "I am voting for the people of Alaska," she said.

"Lisa gave a wonderful speech that day at the White House," Collins added, with her colleague sitting next to her. "And I remembered being so proud of you for saying directly to the President what your obligations were."

Both women felt that one of those obligations was protecting federal funds for Planned Parenthood during the health care battle, saying too many women in their states relied on it for health care needs like cancer screenings. Collins said she felt it was "inconsistent with our Republican ideals" to advocate for people to choose their own health care providers -- but not if it was Planned Parenthood.

Just three days after Murkowski and Collins were the only two Republicans to oppose a procedural vote to move on to a health care measure -- resulting in Vice President Mike Pence having to make the tie-breaking vote -- the two were back in the "no" column again, but this time they had company.

Sen. John McCain joined the two women to vote against what was dubbed the "skinny repeal" bill to strip away key aspects of the Affordable Care Act -- essentially a last-resort option for Senate Republicans after other measures failed to advance. While very few senators were particularly thrilled about the legislation, they were hoping to at least pass it, then work with the House to improve it in a conference committee.

But it wasn't good enough for Collins and Murkowski, and in a dramatic twist, McCain became the third Republican senator to vote no, effectively sinking the bill. They said they didn't know for sure how he was going to vote until he walked up to them on the floor after midnight at the late-night vote.

"I so remember when both Lisa and I were talking with John McCain on the Senate floor and he pointed to both of us and he said, you two are right on this issue," she said. "And that's when I knew for sure."

Murkowski said she'll never forget a conversation the three had after the vote.

"He said people might not appreciate what has happened right now as being a positive," she recalled. "But time will prove that having a pause, having time out for us to do better is going to be good for the country. And it was a good, good, strong John McCain message."

Just a few days later, Republican Sen. Jeff Flake of Arizona, a longtime critic of Trump's, released a scathing critique of the President in his book, arguing that his party was in "denial" and urging others to stand up to the White House.

Asked by Bash if there was a noticeable shift in the way Republicans were starting to handle Trump, Collins said that many in her party are still interested in the President's agenda but are not so tolerant of his style.

"I don't think that the caucus is ignoring the President," Collins said. "But there may be some ignoring of his rhetoric, which, at times, is over the top."

Murkowski agreed, saying that when the rhetoric from the Oval Office "is not constructive to governing," it's "important to speak up."

"And I think you are starting to see a little bit of that," she added. "I think we're all still getting to know this new administration and how this President operates."

Read more from the original source:

Collins, Murkowski take CNN behind the scenes of the health care battle - CNN