More than half of the employers surveyed plan to make employees cover a greater share of their healthcare costs.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry now says it was a mistake to order mandatory HPV vaccinations for all girls entering the sixth grade, The Wall Street Journal reports.

The New York Times notes that cuts to healthcare spending mean cuts to healthcare-sector jobs.

Kaiser Health News talks to Mila Kofman, who resigned as Maine's insurance commissioner over a new healthcare law in the state, about new disclosure rules the federal government released Wednesday.

Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska) is the latest member of Congress to raise questions about a proposed merger between two pharmacy benefit managers.

Young raised questions about the merger of Express Scripts and Medco in a letter to Federal Trade Commission Chairman Jon Leibowitz.

Merging the two pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) could have a "devastating" impact on community pharmacies, Young wrote. He said small pharmacies have little power when negotiating drug prices with PBMs.

"The combined 'synergies' of the merged entity may not lower drug costs," Young wrote. "It may simply create greater negotiating leverage to enable this new merged PBM to extract additional savings from other market participants, which has no guarantee of being passed on to plan sponsors and consumers."

Reps. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) and Tom Marino (R-Pa.) have also raised concerns about the merger.

The Health and Human Services Department on Wednesday released new guidelines for the standardized information that all insurance plans will have to provide under the healthcare reform law.

The law requires insurers to provide a uniform explanation of benefits and a standardized glossary of insurance terms. HHS released a blank version of the forms that insurers will have to provide.

“Today, many consumers don’t have easy access to information in plain English to help them understand the differences in the coverage and benefits provided by different health plans,” HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said in a statement. “Thanks to the Affordable Care Act, that will change.”

The summary of benefits is intended to help consumers make an "apples-to-apples" comparison between plans. It includes standardized breakdowns of how much certain treatments would cost — for example, a visit to a primary-care doctor, or generics and brand-name drugs.

The proposed form is based on a draft crafted by the National Association of Insurance Commissioners. NAIC officials said they're pleased with the process and the regulations that HHS proposed.

"We are pleased that consumers are going to have clear easy access to information about the policies that they're considering," Montana Insurance Commissioner Monica Lindeen said.

— This post was updated at 4:08 p.m.

Former Surgeon General Richard Carmona is thinking about running as a Democrat for the Senate seat being vacated by retiring Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.), according to the Arizona Capitol Times.

“I’m still trying to figure out whether it’s the right thing for me,” he said. “I enjoy public service. I enjoyed being surgeon general of the United States. I’ve worked in government at local, state and national levels. But I’m not sure if an elected position is the right thing for me. I’ve agreed to at least consider it.”

Carmona served as surgeon general under President George W. Bush but was publicly critical of the president, accusing him of trying to water down scientific reports on the effects of secondhand smoke and climate change for political reasons.

He could be a strong candidate for the seat in the Republican-leaning state. Some Democrats in the state indicate there may be other strong recruits in the offing. There is also an outside chance that Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) may recover fast enough from her January assassination attempt to run for the seat. Other Democrats interested in the race may be holding off on announcing their intentions until Giffords makes a decision.

Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) is the front-runner on the GOP side, although wealthy businessman Wil Cardon’s self-financed candidacy could give Flake headaches. The state gave favorite son Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) 53 percent of the vote in his 2008 run for president.

The healthcare reform law doesn't provide any money for a federally run insurance exchange, Politico reports.

Republican state lawmakers in Minnesota are fighting hard against an exchange in the state, according to Politics in Minnesota.

ThinkProgress has video of Michele Bachmann telling a campaign crowd in South Carolina that the new law will deny them treatment they need.

The powerful business lobby urged lawmakers to overhaul the tax code while undertaking a fundamental reform of entitlement programs.

The American Civil Liberties Union on Tuesday filed suit to block a Kansas law restricting access to insurance coverage for abortion.

Kansas law prohibits comprehensive insurance policies from covering abortion, except to save the life of a pregnant woman. Abortion coverage can be purchased separately, but the ACLU says it’s not available to all women.

“This law is part of a nationwide trend to take away insurance coverage for a legal medical procedure that is an important part of basic healthcare for women,” said Brigitte Amiri, senior staff attorney with the ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project. “Many things can happen in a pregnancy that are beyond a woman’s control, so having insurance coverage for abortion ensures that every woman can get the health care she may need.”

Medicare pays much more for prescription drugs than Medicaid, according to a report from the inspector general of the Health and Human Services Department. 

The report says Medicaid rebates help keep prices low in the program.

Medicaid and Medicare plans paid roughly the same up-front costs for prescription drugs, the report says, but Medicaid got far more of its money back through rebates from drug manufacturers. The program recaptured about 45 percent of its drug spending, compared with roughly 19 percent for Medicare's drug benefit.

Many congressional Democrats want to expand Medicaid's drug rebates to cover people who are eligible for both Medicare and Medicaid. That proposal was floated during negotiations over the debt ceiling, but met strong resistance from the pharmaceutical industry and from Republicans.