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Welcome to The Hill's evening roundup of the day's health policy news and advance look at tomorrow's schedule.

Tuesday's health news

Lawmaker calls for briefing on mental health danger signs: A leading lawmaker on mental health issues is calling for a bipartisan debate on how to keep lawmakers and their staff and families safe in the wake of Saturday's deadly shooting in Tucson, Ariz. 

Rep. Grace Napolitano (D-Calif.), co-chairwoman of the Congressional Mental Health Caucus, wants the group to hold a briefing focusing on the behaviors and threats that raise red flags.

"Police agencies already do that," Napolitano told The Hill. "I want to make sure some of our employees — those that are interested — are able to at least benefit from some kind of information that almost everybody else in law enforcement knows about." http://bit.ly/dL2UkG Read more...

Rep. Grace Napolitano (D-Calif.) said lawmakers need to know red flags in wake of the Arizona shooting.

The powerful U.S. Chamber of Commerce called for a repeal of Democrats' healthcare reform law and then outlined specific issues it has with the legislation during the annual State of American Business address on Tuesday.

The speech comes as the White House has been trying to repair relations with the business community in the wake of Democrats' midterm losses. Chamber President and CEO Thomas Donohue predicted Tuesday that "the president will see value in making the constructive changes that are needed in the bill."

"We see the upcoming House vote [on repeal] as an opportunity for everyone to take a fresh look at health care reform — and to replace unworkable approaches with more effective measures that will lower costs, expand access, and improve quality," Donohue said in prepared remarks.

R. Bruce Josten, the chamber's executive vice president for Government Affairs, laid out his organization's priorities: 

• Repeal of the 1099 tax reporting requirement. "We expect we'll see that repealed at some point," Josten said, since President Obama also favors its elimination;

• Changes to the law's penalties for businesses whose workers opt for government-funded healthcare because they can't get employer-sponsored coverage. Josten said this would have a "devastating effect" on the franchising industry;

• A retooling of the medical loss ratio that requires health plans to spend a minimum percentage (80 or 85 percent) of premiums on medical care. Josten said the provision was particularly hard on plans that cover expatriates because of their "24/7" business structure; and 

• Reforms that allow people to keep consumer-directed health plans, such as Health Savings Accounts and Flexible Savings Accounts. Such plans have helped big corporations such as Safeway to keep their healthcare costs low by incentivizing patients to use healthcare judiciously, Josten said, but many Democrats think they provide insufficient coverage.

"To us, this is a tandem deal," Josten said of the repeal vote and its accompanying resolution requiring House committees to start drafting replacement bills. The vote, scheduled for this week but postponed after Saturday's shooting in Arizona, will "begin the process to make some changes and corrections so that this is more workable and more affordable."

Welcome to The Hill's evening roundup of the day's health policy news and advance look at tomorrow's schedule.

Monday's health news

Giffords shooting fallout: The weekend shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) has thrown the timing of the healthcare reform repeal vote into question. Few on either side of the debate doubt that the divisive issue will resurface shortly, however.

Republicans made repeal a centerpiece of their platform in the 2010 midterm elections, and many voters expect them to deliver. Democrats, who lost the messaging war last year, view the repeal debate as a golden opportunity to sell the law to the American people.

Even the rhetorical truce is already ending. Rep. Chellie Pingree (D-Maine) for example has called on Republicans to rename the "Repeal the Job-Killing Health Care Law Act," arguing that Republicans "have a responsibility to help turn down the temperature on the nation's debate and help restore an element of civility to the discussion." Conservatives for their part have been pushing back against liberal attempts to tie Saturday's shooting to Republican rhetoric. http://bit.ly/hYnpIB

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Federal regulators announced Friday they used new powers to slap Mississippi retailers with warning letters after state investigators found they sold tobacco products to minors.
 
The Food and Drug Administration issued 25 warnings over the past three months to retailers for violation of the 2009 Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act. The law empowers the FDA to issue warnings to retailers that sell a tobacco product to a minor, fail to request proper identification, sell prohibited flavored cigarettes and have self-service displays accessible to minors.

Mississippi was the first of 15 states last year to receive FDA contracts to assist in inspecting retailers that sell tobacco products.

The warning letters instruct retailers to submit a correction plan within 15 days. Retailers can be banned from selling tobacco if they fail to correct the violation, and they are also subject to product seizure, injunction or fines.

This marks the FDA's second major tobacco announcement this week. On Wednesday, the agency announced that tobacco products introduced or changed since Feb. 15, 2007, must be "substantially equivalent" to products sold before then. 

Welcome to The Hill's evening roundup of the day's health policy news and advance look at tomorrow's schedule.

Thursday’s health news:

Repeal bill adds $230 billion to deficit: Congressional budget scorekeepers said Thursday that Republicans' effort to repeal healthcare reform would increase the deficit by about $230 billion over the first 10 years, adding fodder to Democrats' argument that House Republicans are backtracking on a campaign promise to reduce the deficit. Republicans next week will vote to repeal the reform bill without offsetting the cost, but the GOP says the Congressional Budget Office’s (CBO) deficit projections are the result of “budget gimmickry.”

"CBO can only provide a score based on the assumptions that are given to them," said Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) in a Thursday morning press conference. "If you go back to look at the healthcare bill and the assumptions that were given to them, you see all of the double counting that went on." http://bit.ly/euEyDE

House Dems slam GOP's CBO dismissal: Democrats criticized Republicans for rejecting the deficit estimate, comparing the nonpartisan CBO to a referee on the playing field. "When you don't like the call on the field, it's not part of the rules of the game that you throw the referee off the field and substitute your judgment," Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), the ranking member of the Budget Committee, told reporters.

New Speaker defends repeal strategy: John Boehner (R-Ohio) continued to fight back Thursday morning against Democrats' accusations that the GOP is trying to rush through the repeal bill without allowing amendments. “I promised a more open process," he said during the Thursday press conference. "I did not promise that every single bill would be an open bill." http://bit.ly/heV9rF

Boehner said that Republicans were elected to quickly repeal the reform law, even if that means bypassing House committees. "We made a commitment to the American people," he said. http://bit.ly/giQsHy

Heritage breaks down CBO score: The conservative Heritage Foundation raises several issues with the CBO's estimate: 

• It doesn't include the Medicare "doc fix";

• It assumes savings from Medicare cuts and the long-term CLASS Act insurance program that Democrats have "double-counted" as deficit busters AND revenues for those respective programs;

• It may underestimate the cost of subsidies as more businesses drop their coverage.

Republicans already have introduced a slew of legislation aimed at repealing, defunding or otherwise weakening Democrats' reform law.

House Republicans are rejecting a Congressional Budget Office analysis that says repealing last year's healthcare reform bill would increase the budget deficit by $145 billion through 2019, $230 billion through 2021, and add to deficits in the decade after that (although CBO does not have a firm estimate for the second decade).

In Thursday's Rules Committee hearing on a pending healthcare reform bill, Chairman David Dreier (R-Calif.) said Republicans have a "response" to that CBO analysis: a new House Budget Committee report that says enactment of the healthcare law will add $701 billion to the deficit in 10 years and will cost $2.6 trillion when fully implemented.

Rep. James McGovern (D-Mass.) said Dreier's comments worry him because they imply CBO estimates will be ignored when Republicans disagree with them and will be replaced by Republican estimates. Dreier responded by saying Republicans want to look at the cost of legislation beyond a 10-year timeframe in order to ensure Congress does not pass legislation that might save money early on but lead to an "explosion" in spending in later years.

The Rules Committee hearing began at 10 a.m. and is expected to take up much of the rest of today, after which a vote on the rule for the repeal bill, H.R. 2, is expected.

Two federal departments teamed up Thursday to help people with disabilities retain their independence.

The housing and health departments announced a partnership aimed at helping 1,000 non-elderly people with disabilities leave nursing homes and other institutions through a combination of rental assistance vouchers and healthcare and related support services. The Department of Housing and Urban Services is providing $7.5 million in rental assistance vouchers, while the Department of Health and Human Services will provide health and social services through its "Money Follows the Person" grant program.

"Through our collaboration with the Department of Housing and Urban Development, I know that we will be able to dramatically change peoples' lives," HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said in a statement. "Individuals with disabilities can have a life in the community that serves their needs and supports them in leading productive, meaningful lives."

The nation's spending on healthcare grew 4 percent, to $2.5 trillion, in 2009, according to a new report from the Medicare agency's Office of the Actuary — the slowest rate of growth since the federal government began keeping track in 1960.

Despite the slowdown in insurance payments and out-of-pocket spending, the increase in healthcare spending still outpaced the overall growth of the economy, which contracted by 1.7 percent. On average, Americans spent $8,086 per person on healthcare in 2009, far more than any other country.

Democrats have pointed to the unsustainable rate of growth as a key reason to move ahead with healthcare reform that rewards quality rather than quantity of care. Republican critics counter that the law itself does little to cut costs and could make the situation worse by extending coverage to more people.