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The healthcare sector added 32,000 jobs last month, continuing its record of consistently strong gains.

Doctors' offices and outpatient health centers saw the biggest gains, adding 14,000 jobs in February. Nursing homes added 9,000 new workers, and hospitals also added roughly 9,000 jobs, according to data released Friday by the Labor Department.

Healthcare has been a consistent leader in the steadily improving employment rate. The sector added 23,000 jobs in January, when employment in healthcare had jumped by 320,000 over the year.

Three Western states are running out of time to set up their own exchanges, Kaiser Health News reports. Read more...

Paul Ryan's budget will preserve both tax increases and Medicare cuts in current law, The New York Times reports.

The Los Angeles Times says California's insurance exchange could partner with Wal-Mart.

Florida Republicans are divided over Rick Scott's plan to accept the healthcare law's Medicaid expansion, Kaiser Health News reports.

The federal Health department is making the adoption of information technology (IT) a major priority for U.S. healthcare in 2013.

Obama administration officials announced Wednesday that initiatives like electronic health records and interoperability among medical providers will be a major focus in the coming year.

Marilyn Tavenner, Medicare and Medicaid's acting administrator, praised President Obama's healthcare law for encouraging the moves and helping to lower costs. 

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The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is partnering with the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service to hold meetings in five states nationwide in an effort to formulate a rule that curbs antibiotic use in livestock used as food.

Last year, the FDA proposed to require a veterinary prescription for any antibiotic in animals that would become food, and is reaching out to the industry, the public and local communities about the challenges that those regulations may impose.

In an earlier study, the FDA found that 80 percent of all antibiotics sold in the United States are used on animals. Penicillin and other drugs are often mixed into food or water to prevent cows, chicken, pigs and other livestock from getting sick in crowded pens.

The House Ways and Means Committee approved a bill Wednesday to prevent the Obama administration from giving states waivers under welfare reform.

The 28-14 vote sets the stage for an eventual floor vote on the measure (H.R. 890), which echoes a similar bill from last year.

The Obama administration announced last summer that it would allow states to apply for waivers under the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program, or welfare reform, so they could test new ways to increase employment among welfare recipients.

With the sequester in effect, expect a big week as healthcare stakeholders weigh the impact of budget cuts. In Washington, hospitals will convene a major conference, and the House healthcare committees will explore issues ranging from the Affordable Care Act to U.S. mental healthcare to entitlement reform.

The Federation of American Hospitals is holding its public policy conference Tuesday — just in time to discuss the potential impact of the sequester.
 
Scheduled to speak are: Sens. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), ranking member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee, and Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio); Reps. Charles Boustany Jr. (R-La.), chairman of the House Ways and Means subcommittee on Oversight, and Kevin Brady (R-Texas), chairman of the House Ways and Means subcommittee on Health; and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Marilyn Tavenner.

Leading Senate Republicans asked the federal Health department Friday how it plans to implement sequestration, the automatic cuts to the federal budget.

In a letter to Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, Sens. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) and Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) demanded details for all HHS accounts and how they will comply with sequester reductions. 

Alexander, Moran and Hatch are ranking Republicans on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee; the HELP Labor-HHS Appropriations Subcommittee; and the Finance Committee, respectively.

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Interest groups barrage Congress with sequester pleas.

Spending cuts signal austere future for domestic programs.

Hospitals, health insurers lock horns over provider payments.

A GOP-led hearing called to blast President Obama on his welfare policy softened Thursday as lawmakers shared stories about their childhoods in poverty.

The turn was surprising, given the volatility of the welfare waivers debate, which lit up the presidential election last summer as Republicans accused Obama of "gutting" welfare's work requirement.

On Thursday morning, members of the House Ways and Means subcommittee on human resources hardly mentioned Obama or the waivers policy as they recalled family experiences with government assistance and unemployment.