The federal health department is slapping a Maryland health insurer with a $4.3 million civil money penalty (CMP) for violating medical records rules.

Cignet Health's failure to honor patients' requests for access to their medical records earned the Department of Health and Human Services’s first-ever CMP for a violation of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) privacy rule.

The fine represents the Obama administration’s toughened enforcement of medical privacy laws. The 2009 stimulus package, which provided almost $30 billion to develop electronic health record systems, included boosted penalties for HIPAA violations.

According to HHS’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR), Cignet was fined $1.3 million for denying 41 patients access to their medical records between September 2008 and October 2009. The insurer was fined another $3 million for failing to cooperate with the OCR investigation.

“Ensuring that Americans’ health information privacy is protected is vital to our healthcare system and a priority of this Administration,” HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said in a statement. “[HHS] is serious about enforcing individual rights guaranteed by the HIPAA Privacy Rule.”

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and two Democratic governors spoke out against House Republicans' family planning cuts Tuesday as the Senate prepares to take up the stop-gap funding bill for the rest of the year.

The continuing resolution passed by the House last week eliminated Title X family planning grants, a $327.4 million savings from the president's proposed budget for FY 2011. The House also adopted an amendment from Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.) that bars Planned Parenthood from receiving any federal funding for programs such as HIV screening, breast and cervical cancer screenings and infertility prevention.

Abortion opponents have made Planned Parenthood a focal point of their strategy this Congress. The organization is the country's largest provider of abortions, and Pence has argued that cutting funding for its health clinics will impact Planned Parenthood's ability to carry out abortions.

Bloomberg and the two governors, however, said cuts to family planning would only harm poor women and possibly increase the number of abortions.

"Many people don't realize that more than 90 percent of our health services are preventive in nature," said Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards. "Every year, the doctors and nurses in our centers provide birth control to more 2.5 million women; we conduct more than 1 million cervical cancer screenings and nearly a million breast exams."

Taken together, the two House measures will have "very negative consequences," said Connecticut Gov. Dan Malloy (D), "including driving people in the direction of abortions from unplanned pregnancies."

"I can only imagine that this is a politically motivated vote having nothing to do with public health, having nothing to do with the welfare of children or of women," Malloy said during a conference call organized by the Planned Parenthood Federation of America. "It would be a gigantic blow to the state of Connecticut if these cuts were to take place."

Vermont Gov. Peter Shumlin (D) shared similar concerns.

"Cutting Title X money would be devastating for Vermont women," he said. "In a small, rural state like Vermont, often times this is the only healthcare that they get."

Seven times last week, the House voted on amendments that would bar the use of FY 2011 funds to pay the salaries of government workers who are implementing last year's healthcare reform law. Each time, freshman Rep. Chris Gibson (R-N.Y.) opposed it, and twice he was the lone Republican dissenter.

Gibson is traveling this week and was not immediately available for comment. But his staff says Gibson "researches every issue" that comes up in a vote, and decided that while he would support efforts to repeal the law, he would vote against narrower amendments that would stop paying salaries to officials charged with implementation.

Staff said Gibson was worried that language preventing the payment of salaries would effectively get government workers fired or reassigned, which is not as preferable than the clear policy of repealing healthcare. Staff said that Gibson, who served 24 years in the Army, told staff that it is "our job here [in Congress] to write policy."

Four other Republicans joined Gibson in various votes to defund government salaries: Reps. Chip Cravaack (R-Minn.), Richard Hanna (R-N.Y.), Steve LaTourette (R-Ohio), and Kenny Marchant (R-Texas).

Trial lawyers and consumer advocates are trotting out a novel argument as they fight off tort reform proposals: they say medical malpractice suits, rather than driving over-use of costly tests by risk-averse doctors, instead prevent rationing.

The political stars are aligning in favor of tort reform this Congress, with House Republicans vowing to pass a $250,000 cap on non-economic damages, and the White House setting aside $250 million in the 2012 budget for state experiments. One culprit, in lawyers' view, is the concept of "defensive medicine" that has been uniting Republicans who want to cut doctors' malpractice insurance bills and Democrats worried about wasteful medical spending that's bankrupting federal programs.

This week, the consumer organization Center for Justice and Democracy began to release excerpts from a draft research article that questions the prevalence of defensive medicine. And the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen had scheduled a media briefing, now postponed, on defensive medicine for Tuesday.

"'Defensive medicine' by all scholarly reviews has become a myth, a combination of surveys of interested parties and the 'imagination' that those parties are avoiding — or believe they are avoiding — liability through alteration of their medical practices," writes Fred Hyde, a professor at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, whose study was funded by the Center for Justice and Democracy. "The costs, if any, of defensive medicine, are trivial, in comparison to the medical and social costs of negligence."

The Health and Human Services Department announced billions of dollars in new healthcare reform funding to help Medicaid beneficiaries remain in their homes and other community settings.  

Thirteen states — including a handful that are challenging the healthcare overhaul in federal court — will receive about $45 million for demonstration grants this year, with $621 million committed through 2016. HHS also proposed new rules allowing states to tap into a potential $3.7 billion fund to provide community-based care to disabled Medicare beneficiaries.

The Money Follows the Person demonstration program helps Medicaid beneficiaries move from a nursing home or other institution to a community setting, including an individual’s home. The demonstration program, which currently operates in 29 states and the District of Columbia, would have expired in 2011 without the reform law.

States receiving the grants Tuesday include: Colorado, Florida, Idaho, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Mississippi, Nevada, New Mexico, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Vermont and West Virginia. Six of the states — Colorado, Florida, Idaho, Maine, Mississippi and Nevada — are challenging the healthcare reform law in federal court.

Vaccine makers cannot be sued over side effects from childhood vaccines, the Supreme Court ruled Tuesday.

By a 6-2 ruling, the high court upheld that federal law prevents a drug manufacturer from being sued for a vaccine-related injury or death if the vaccine was properly prepared and accompanied by proper directions and warnings.

The court ruled against parents who claim their daughter suffers from a seizure disorder as the result of a Wyeth vaccination she received as an infant in 1992. The vaccine was discontinued in 1998.

The National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986 was enacted to reduce the potential financial liability of vaccine makers while ensuring supply. It created a no-fault arbitration process for injury claims, known as the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program.

Florida judge said he will quickly consider an Obama administration request to clarify whether states must comply with the law.

Asked if the Senate had the votes to defeat Pence’s battle against Planned Parenthood, Al Franken offered a one-word answer: “Yes."

The Obama administration is gearing up for an influx of state requests to modify the federal-state Medicaid partnership.