Health highlights today

President Barack Obama will mark the 90-day anniversary of health reform passage by meeting Tuesday morning at the White House with health insurance executives. The president reportedly wants to warn insurers (again) not to hike rates unreasonably ahead of consumer protection provisions of the new reform law. There should be plenty to talk about. The Kaiser Family Foundation reported on Monday that premiums for those buying insurance in the individual market recently jumped 20 percent.

In Congress, the House returns today to face a six-month doc-fix bill passed by the Senate on Friday. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is none too happy with that proposal, for several reasons: It's a much shorter fix than the 19-month patch the House passed last month; it's partially offset by a pension provision that's wildly unpopular with labor groups; and removing the doc-fix from a larger tax extenders bill will almost certainly make it more difficult to move the larger proposal through the Senate. "I see no reason to pass this inadequate bill until we see jobs legislation coming out of the Senate," Pelosi said Friday. Still, with doctors already receiving a 21 percent Medicare pay cut, there's plenty of pressure on House leaders to approve the short-term fix quickly. 

Across the Capitol, Senate Democrats are still hoping to move their tax extenders bill, which includes almost $24 billion in Medicaid funding for states. They've been haggling behind the scenes to win the support of several centrist Republicans — to no avail thus far. In a test vote last Thursday, Sens. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) also opposed the bill.

Meanwhile, some Senate Democrats are still fighting to extend COBRA subsidies for the unemployed — a $4.1 billion measure that Sens. Bob Casey Jr. (D-Pa.) and Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) are hoping to attach to the extenders bill. They have a tough road ahead — one healthcare advocate this week likened the COBRA amendment to "a Himalayan expedition."

Also Tuesday, the Senate is expected to approve more than 60 White House nominees who have been stalled before the upper chamber for months. But Donald Berwick, Obama’s controversial pick to head the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, is not among them. “He will not get unanimous consent,” a spokesman for Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said Monday evening. 

Speaking of Berwick, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) weighed in this week on the controversial nominee, telling The New York Times that Berwick has the academic qualifications to oversee Medicare, but that he wants to explore Berwick's comments on rationing. "It doesn't help him to say good things about the British healthcare system," Grassley told the Times. 

On healthcare reform, senior Finance Committee aides Liz Fowler (D) and Chuck Clapton (R) will be featured Tuesday at a late policy breakfast hosted by the CQ-Roll Call folks.

Also related to health reform, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) issued some bad news for the Democrats Monday, finding that high-risk insurance pools — designed to cover sicker Americans until insurance exchanges launch in 2014 — will cost up to three times more than the $5 billion that the Democrats’ reform law allocated for them. If more money isn’t pumped into the program, CBO Director Doug Elmendorf warned in a letter to Sen. Mike Enzi (Wyo.), senior Republican on the Senate health committee, hundreds of thousands of patients could go without care in 2012 and 2013.

Republicans are already pointing to the CBO analysis to accuse Democrats of making false promises during the healthcare reform debate.