Healthcare

The passing of Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) late Tuesday night has quickly become a catalyst for healthcare reform among his mourners, seeking to follow through on what the late senator called "the cause of my life."

Supporters of the healthcare reform bills before Congress, on which Kennedy had placed his imprimatur, summoned the liberal senator's legacy on Wednesday in speaking about health legislation's prospects in the future.

"Senator Kennedy said that 'health care is the fight of his life,'" Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) Chairman Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) said in his statement on Kennedy's death. "Today, we pick up the torch and recommit ourselves to health insurance reform."

Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.), who took over Kennedy's spot as head of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee in the senator's absence, made note of Kennedy's legacy on healthcare.

The statements build on a perhaps obvious theme in statements by supporters of healthcare reform that will emerge today, drawing on Kennedy's cachet on healthcare to advance Kennedy's most prized legislative priority.

"He fought to the very end for the cause of his life -- ensuring that all Americans have the health care they need," Dodd said in a statement.

One of the top labor unions supporting health reform bills before the House and Senate also called on the Congress to "build on Senator Kennedy's vision of America" and pass healthcare reform.

"In Senator Kennedy

Town hall meetings are important to heed and have had an effect on Sen. Arlen Specter's (D-Pa.) healthcare stance, the veteran senator said Tuesday.

"It has had an impact on me," he said during an interview on Fox News.

"I think the people who were boisterous and wouldn't allow other people to be heard -- that's unusual at town hall meetings," Specter added. "But beneath that, beyond any question, there's tremendous anger."

Specter's town hall meeting earlier this month raised eyebrows after the nationally-televised event showed a loud confrontation between Specter and some constituents over healthcare.

The Pennsylvania senator, who switched parties to pursue reelection as a Democrat, said that his constituents' anger extends beyond healthcare.

"It goes beyond healthcare -- it's a matter of the deficit and the national debt, and that's why I pledged to vote for a healthcare insurance reform bill which raises the deficit," he said. "And I think we have to be concerned about the expansion of government, and be sensitive to what people are thinking about."

"I certainly would not criticize them; I am going to listen to them," he added. "No matter how vituperative they are, they are citizens."

The healthcare reform bills before Congress would in essence violate physicians' Hippocratic Oaths take to ethically practice medicine, Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) suggested Monday night.

"What I think is in front of us is violating the first oath of medicine, which is the first thing is to do no harm," Coburn said during a interview on Fox News. "And that's not to deny a recognition that we have significant problems in terms of competitiveness and cost in our country."

Doctors traditionally take a modern version of the oath, derived from the ancient Greek physician Hippocrates's original oath for doctors, after graduation from medical school.

Coburn is a physician who practiced obstetrics and gynecology before coming to the Senate, and even did work pro bono delivering babies until the Senate Ethics Committee ordered him to stop.

The conservative Oklahoman said that he didn't know why Republicans had not made their own stab at healthcare reform while in control of the House and Senate, noting that he didn't arrive in Washington until 2005.

"I can't account for the five years before that," Coburn said. "But the fact is, is they didn't take advantage of any of the opportunities they had to make big changes, and they could have done this and they should have, but they didn't."

A top labor official said Monday that President Obama and White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel have indicated that they will not bring up "card check" legislation until after healthcare reform is done in Congress.

AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Richard Trumka, the expected incoming president of the influential union, pledged during a web chat on the liberal blog firedoglake that organized labor would work to pass healthcare reform in order to move onto one of its top priorities, the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA).

"The President/and Emanuel have both said they dont intend to bring Employee Free Choice Act up until Health Insurance Reform is done," Trumka wrote on the blog. "Which gives us an additional reason to do Health Insurance Reform now!"

The remarks all but acknowledge that EFCA, one of labor's most prized legislative goals, will take a backseat to the Obama administration's most pressing priority for the meanwhile.

Obama has endorsed the union organizing bill, though he and other senior administration officials have spoken about it much less in public as centrist Democrats in the Senate have been reluctant to fully back the bill.

Republicans, for the most part, have opposed the bill as a threat to businesses.

Trumka also sent a message to allies in the White House and Congress that they expected eventual movement on EFCA, and that it could not be put off indefinitely.

"We WILL PASS EMPLOYEE FREE CHOICE ACT legislation, we will not allow our

Fear is the friend of Republican lawmakers looking to slow down or prevent healthcare reform legislation from going forward, one Democratic lawmaker asserted Monday.

"Fear is their friend," Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) said in a conference call organized by the Democratic National Committee (DNC) to respond to a "Seniors' Health Care Bill of Rights" released by their GOP counterpart this morning.

"The Republican Party has to take responsibility for their lies and their hypocrisy when it comes to seniors and healthcare reform," Schakowsky said. "The substance of this document uses false claims that have time and again been debunked."

The Republican National Committee's (RNC) "bill of rights" would, among other things, oppose cuts to Medicare to fund healthcare reform, preventing government involvement in end-of-life care, and "prohibit efforts to ration health care based on age."

Schakowsky accused Republicans of "doing nothing except saying 'no' and spreading lies" in the document, and accused the GOP of " carrying the water of the insurance companies, of the status quo."

"There may be Democrats who would like to see a bipartisan solution to this, but the Republicans are unwilling to compromise," she said, predicting that the House would return in September to pass legislation containing a public (or "government-run") option for consumers.

Attorney General Eric Holder will appoint a prosecutor to investigate allegations that CIA agents tortured detainees suspected of terror during interrogations, the Washington Post reported Monday.

Holder will name John Durham, a Justice Department prosecutor, to investigate whether a broader inquiry into CIA agents' tactics will be necessary, the Post reported.

President Obama had previously said that he doesn't support prosecuting CIA officials for having followed the advice of legal counsel during the Bush administration, but the White House emphasized Monday that Holder was acting independently.

"As the president has said repeatedly, he thinks that we should be looking forward, not backward," White House Deputy Press Secretary Bill Burton told reporters following Obama at Martha's Vineyard.

"Ultimately the decisions on who is investigated and who is prosecuted are up to the attorney general," Burton added. "The president thinks that Eric Holder, who he appointed as a very independent attorney general, should make those decisions."

Also expected Monday is a report from the CIA's inspector general into potential detainee abuse.

The investigation and report come after the White House decided to take over the interrogation of high-level terrorist detainees through the National Security Agency.

The top Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, Sen. Kit Bond (Mo.), criticized that move as a vote of no confidence in CIA Director Leon Panetta.

Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) signaled Monday that he may be reluctant to back a public option in healthcare reform legislation, but left the door open to other government plans that have been floated.

Warner, a centrist Democrat, laid out criteria during an interview with a Roanoke television affiliate for a bill that he could support.

"I want to make sure there are some competitive alternatives to the insurance companies," he said. "But I'm concerned that simply expanding Medicare and Medicaid without getting the financial incentives right -- it's going to again end up driving up the deficit costs."

Warner has been coy about whether he would support a public option, and, along with other recalcitrant Democrats, could even end up scuttling Democratic leaders' fallback plan of passing healthcare reform with a simple majority vote using budgetary rules.

"I don't think a single payer, government-run system ought to be the goal of healthcare reform," he said, adding that he was not eager to support any bill containing new taxes to finance the system.

The first-term Virginia senator also saved some criticism for President Obama for not having adequately communicated the stakes in the healthcare debate.

"One of the things that I've been disappointed in the president's approach is that he didn't make the case to the American people that if we do nothing, we're still headed toward a disaster," he said.

A single payer healthcare system is still "part of the conversation" in the ongoing reform efforts, one Democratic lawmaker said Monday.

Rep. Yvette Clark (D-N.Y.) said that advancing single payer system was still part of some Democrats' efforts on crafting healthcare reform, after they were forced to abandon such a plan in favor of a public (or "government-run") option (which she characterized as the "next best" alternative).

"I think single payer is really part of the conversation right now," Clark said during an appearance on MSNBC, pointing to work by Education and Labor Committee Democrats to insert an amendment while marking up the healthcare bill allowing states the option of establishing a single payer system.

"In the Education and Labor Committee, we voted for an amendment that will be part of the bill that will speaks to states having the right to choose a single payer process," she said.

"Each state has a right, under the Constitution, to make those types of determinations," Clark added. "We're simply setting up the framework for a new healthcare reform delivery system."

Republicans have fretted that the public option would eventually lead to a single payer system, using that line of attack as a cudgel against Democrats' current healthcare reform plans in Congress.

The current H1N1 "swine flu" epidemic is unlikely to reach pandemic proportions last seen during the 1918-19 global influenza strike, a White House report concluded Monday.

A report by the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology said that while the swine flu isn't as virulent as the flu of the early 20th century, the virus "poses a serious health threat to the United States," and could result in the infection of up to 30 to 50 percent of the U.S. population.

The council's report anticipates an uptick in swine flu infections this fall, and predicts between 30,000 and 90,000 deaths from the flu, concentrated amongst children and young adults.

"The fall resurgence may well occur as early as September, with the beginning of the school term,
and the peak infection may occur in mid-October," the report's executive summary said.

The council urged the Obama administration to bolster coordination between agencies to respond to a number of potential health scenarios. Among the key variables to monitor would be surveillance of flu cases, the government's response to an outbreak, and the barriers to the spread of the disease.

"The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Institutes of Health, and Food and Drug Administration, has already made some important progress on the recommendations found in the PCAST subcommittee report and we plan to adopt others to ensure we are doing everything we can to keep Americans healthy and safe," said HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius.

"HIN1 influenza has the potential to affect virtually every aspect of our lives, from our economy and national security to our education system," said Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano. "It may not be possible to stop influenza, but we can reduce the number of people who become severely ill by preparing well and acting effectively."

House lawmakers will have to provide their Senate colleagues some "adult supervision" by moving ahead on a healthcare bill without them, Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) suggested Monday.

Weiner, who has spent the past week pushing Democrats to more forcefully assert their majority status in the healthcare debate, said that the House should no longer wait for the Senate to act before sending its own bill to conference with the Senate.

"We need some adult supervision, so we need the House to act," Weiner said during an appearance on MSNBC. "Honestly, this is getting ridiculous over there."

Weiner's words reflect a growing frustration with the Senate for not having moved forward on healthcare, letting members of the Senate Finance Committee continue to try to cobble together a reform bill by mid-September.

The New York liberal decried a "vacuum" of leadership during the August congressional recess, and called on the House to move forward to fill the void.

But problems still percolate in House Democrats' own backyard; Blue Dog Democrat Co-Chairwoman Stephanie Herseth Sandlin (D-N.D.) suggested this weekend that the public (or "government-run") option favored by Weiner and other liberals wouldn't survive a conference with the Senate bill -- if the public option even makes it into the preliminary House bill.

Weiner called on President Obama to make his own position more clear as the health debate progresses, too.

"I think the time has come for the president to say here's why we need it and here's what it is," he said. "We need to the president to be very clear what he wants, and then we'll do it."