Health reform implementation

Hatch said a new office created by the healthcare law was wasting money on high salaries and expensive perks.

Members of the GOP Doctors Caucus promised Tuesday to back repeal of President Obama's healthcare law at "every choke point" ahead of the fiscal deadlines now facing Washington.

Rep. Phil Gingrey (R-Ga.) said the GOP should go "full monty" on full or partial repeal at every turn. He and his colleagues argued the law will harm the economy and lead to "rationing" of healthcare as it's implemented.

"This will structurally change the practice of medicine," said Rep. Andy Harris (R-Md.), another GOP doctor. "There will be financial incentives for physician gatekeepers to actually limit care." 

Chief Justice John Roberts used a semantic "sleight of hand" when he upheld a key provision of President Obama's healthcare law, a GOP lawmaker said Tuesday.

Rep. Phil Gingrey (R-Ga.), a member of the GOP Doctors Caucus, criticized Roberts during a call with reporters.

He focused on Roberts's interpretation of the individual mandate to buy health insurance as a tax.

The bill's introduction comes alongside an industry report saying the coverage tax will cost 146,000 to 262,000 jobs by 2022.

The IRS should not enforce new penalties under President Obama's healthcare law until employers have some time to get used to the new rules, business groups said.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce urged the IRS to give businesses a one-year grace period before enforcing penalties attached to the law's employer mandate — the provision requiring large employers to offer their workers healthcare coverage.

In comments submitted to the IRS and the Treasury Department late Monday, the Chamber requested "a one-year non-enforcement period to allow employers to work to comply with the requirement without fear of tremendous and potentially business eviscerating penalties."

Employers can't make workers wait more than 90 days to use their healthcare coverage, the Obama administration said in new regulations Monday.

The proposed rules implement part of the Affordable Care Act that prohibit waiting periods longer than 90 days before health coverage kicks in.

Some employer-based healthcare plans come with a waiting period between the time employees enroll in the plan and when the employees — or their family members — can actually start using the plan's benefits.

The federal government’s small-business advocate is taking aim at the healthcare reform law’s insurance mandates.

The Office of Advocacy, an independent agency within the Small Business Administration, is calling out the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) for failing to conduct a regulatory flexibility analysis in the crafting of the rules. The analysis is required under a 32-year-old law called the Regulatory Flexibility Act, which requires that agencies spell out how their regulation will impact small businesses in both hours and dollars.

President Obama's healthcare law provided more than 100 million people with coverage for free health services in 2011 and 2012, according to federal health officials.

The Health and Human Services (HHS) Department touted the law's emphasis on preventive care in a new report Monday.

The figures show that 34 million Medicare beneficiaries took advantage of the law's preventive offerings over the last two years. 

"We had an election about that. We won. The president won," House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said.

House Republicans and Democrats fought in committee Friday over the question of President Obama's healthcare law and its effect on premiums.

In the Energy and Commerce subcommittee on Health, GOP members insisted that the law would raise premiums, particularly on younger people in the individual and small-group markets.

Meanwhile, Democrats defended the law's anti-discriminatory provisions and said patients would see lower premiums and more care for every dollar.