Rep. Diane Black's bill would change how the healthcare reform law calculates who is eligible for government help.

Doctors are eager to participate in a private insurer's effort to better coordinate healthcare services, despite widespread skepticism toward a similar effort under the healthcare reform law.

CareFirst Blue Cross Blue Shield launched the effort in March. Almost 75 percent of the doctors in CareFirst's network are now participating, the company said Wednesday — the largest care-coordination effort of its kind.

The program pays primary-care doctors up to 12 percent more for efforts to coordinate patients' care and improve outcomes. 

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Wednesday released a guide of infection prevention recommendations for outpatient services. 

The guide comes as more and more patients have been getting their care in outpatient clinics, physician offices and community-based settings rather than inpatient hospitals over the past few decades. Such settings "have traditionally lacked infrastructure and resources to support infection prevention and surveillance activities," the CDC says.

The recommendations were crafted in collaboration with the Healthcare Infection Control Practices Advisory Committee, an advisory body of 14 infection control experts. According to the CDC, the guide seeks to provide basic infection prevention recommendations for outpatient (ambulatory care) settings; reaffirm standard precautions as the foundation for preventing transmission of infectious agents during patient care in all healthcare settings; and provide links to full guidelines and source documents for more detailed background and recommendations.

The top Democrat on the House Budget Committee sought to turn the table on Republicans asking for "honesty" on the solvency of entitlement programs by demanding that they pay similar attention to tax revenues.

Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) pointed out that the panel on Wednesday was holding its fourth hearing on the solvency of Medicare or Social Security but had yet to look into the nation's tax structure. He said the Congressional Budget Office has said that the primary recent policies driving the need to increase the debt ceiling were the tax breaks of 2001 and 2003, which disproportionately benefit the wealthiest Americans.

"I'm glad we're having, by my account, the fourth hearing on this subject," Van Hollen said, "but if we're going to take a balanced approach to the long-term challenges, let's include that conversation about tax expenditures."

AARP has new ads out Wednesday urging Congress to reject Social Security benefit cuts and raise the eligibility age for Medicare.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (R-Nev.) says he's open to Medicare and Medicaid cuts, The Hill reports, but only in the context of "a grand bargain of more than $4 trillion that has significant revenue raisers."

Entitlement cuts floated by House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) would do little to rein in healthcare spending, writes The Wall Street Journal.

IPAB critics have no fewer than three columns — from Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), Energy and Commerce Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.) and Paul Howard and Douglas Holtz-Eakin — at Politico urging repeal of the cost-cutting board.

In a major shift, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said on Tuesday he is willing to consider changes to Social Security as part of a grand bargain that includes at least $4 trillion in cuts to federal spending.

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) set the health policy world abuzz Tuesday with his list of $353 billion in Medicare cuts that are on the table as part of debt ceiling talks. The list, which Cantor says reflects what negotiators reached agreement on during talks hosted by Vice President Biden, includes a proposal to slash Medicaid by $100 billion by blending provider payment rates. 

Other proposals include reducing home health payments or increasing co-pays under Medicare (saves $50 billion); increasing Medicare co-payments for clinical laboratory tests (saves $16 billon); means-testing hospital stays and prescription drugs ($38 billion); eliminating payments on Medicare's bad debt ($26 billion); and prohibiting first-dollar cover under Medigap (saves $53 billion). 

Read the Healthwatch story.

Details, details: At a lunchtime address before the Chamber of Commerce, Cantor went on to press the White House for more details about its own entitlement reform proposals. Healthwatch's Julian Pecquet has more.

State insurance regulators won't vote any time soon on whether to endorse a bill that would exempt insurance agents from part of healthcare reform.

A task force of the National Association of Insurance Commissioners recently recommended endorsing the bill, sponsored by Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.), that would carve out agents' and brokers' commissions from a section of the new law that limits how much insurance companies can spend on administrative costs.

But when the issue reached the NAIC's executive committee on Tuesday, Florida Insurance Commissioner Kevin McCarty — among the biggest proponents of a carve-out for brokers — said he wasn't asking for a vote from the full NAIC. Support for the Rogers bill is therefore not the NAIC's official position, he clarified.

Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal (R) is asking House Republicans to reject cuts to home healthcare that debt-ceiling negotiators say could save Medicare billions of dollars.

Deal, a former chairman of the Energy and Commerce Health subcommittee, wrote to House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) urging him not to impose co-payments on home healthcare services covered by Medicare and Medicaid. The co-pays are included in a list of Medicare cost reductions that House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) brought to White House negotiations on Monday; the policy, coupled with cost-sharing for nursing homes and cuts to payments for post-acute care, would save $50 billion over 10 years, according to the document.

In a letter dated Thursday, Deal shares his personal experience as caregiver for his mother and his parents-in-law.