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

Republicans on a powerful House panel, who haven’t been shy about flexing their new oversight authority to investigate the healthcare reform law, are setting their sights on a new target – the White House.

The Energy and Commerce Committee, which has announced several probes into President Obama’s health department, is now asking the White House’s health reform office to disclose the details of meetings between the administration and outside groups.

“We are troubled by the secret negotiations which apparently took place between the [White House Office of Health Reform] and outside interest groups, especially given the specific promises of transparency regarding health care reform,” Republicans said in the letter to Nancy-Ann DeParle, who headed the office before her recent promotion to deputy chief of staff.

Repealing Democrats' healthcare reform law would increase the deficit by $210 billion over 10 years, the Congressional Budget Office said Friday.

Separately, however, CBO also said repealing the law could save hundreds of billions of dollars over the long-term if some of its cost-cutting provisions don't go into effect. 

The $210 billion figure is not a surprise, because the law's Medicare cuts and fee increases more than make up for the subsidies for people to buy insurance. A preliminary analysis last month had found that repeal legislation (H.R. 2), which passed the House mostly along party lines on Jan. 19, would add $230 billion to the deficit.

The new figure is considerably larger than the $124 billion the CBO estimated that the law would save when it was enacted last March. That's mostly because the enactment and repeal scores cover different time periods: 2010-2019 for last year's score when the law passed, and 2012-2021 for repeal.  Read more...

The House voted to bar funding for Democrats' reform law and eliminate funding for family planning.

The Obama administration issued a revised federal rule that outlines protections to healthcare workers who object to providing care that violates personal and religious beliefs.

The rule detailing so-called “conscience protections” replaces parts of a Bush-era regulation “that caused confusion and could be taken as overly broad,” the Department of Health and Human Services said on Friday.

Regulators said the revised rule does not alter conscience protections provided under long-standing statutes, including the Church Amendments and the Weldon amendment. The protections generally ban the federal government from punishing or withholding funds from an individual or healthcare entity for refusing to provide healthcare services — typically related to abortion and reproductive health — on religious or moral grounds.

“The administration strongly supports provider conscience laws that protect and support the rights of health care providers, and also recognizes and supports the rights of patients,” HHS said. “Strong conscience laws make it clear that health care providers cannot be compelled to perform or assist in an abortion.”

The man who helped create the “doughnut hole” in Medicare prescription drug coverage defended the program’s original design Friday morning.

The new healthcare reform law will gradually close the doughnut hole over 10 years, and more than 3 million seniors who fell in the coverage gap have already received $250 checks.

But former Ways and Means Chairman Bill Thomas (R-Calif.) said the doughnut hole was an intentional design.

“We were limited by money, but I didn’t want any more money because we had the opportunity to create a structure that was basically actuarial equivalent,” Thomas said during an event at the conservative American Enterprise Institute.

The head of the Food and Drug Administration on Friday told generic drugmakers that the agency is in a "critical time" as dwindling resources and growing demands threaten to delay approval of their products.

FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg used her keynote address at the annual conference of the Generic Pharmaceutical Association (GPhA) to urge generic drugmakers to work with her agency as it develops industry user fees that will ensure generics can quickly be reviewed and approved for sale. The FDA is currently seeking to create new fees that will enable generic and biosimilar drugmakers to directly pay the agency instead of relying on annual congressional appropriations.

House Republicans' stopgap budget bill for the rest of the year would cut the FDA budget by $220 million.

"Our resources are already stretched too thin," Hamburg said. "Looking ahead, it's clear FDA will not be able to make ends meet with our current resourcing, and more approvals will be delayed because of a lack of inspectional resources. That's why it's so important that this year — right now — we begin to constructively address the generic drug user fee issue."

The president's proposed budget for 2012 contains $40 million in anticipated revenues from the new fees, which are still being negotiated.

The House chamber was silenced Thursday night when California Rep. Jackie Speier revealed she had to have an abortion.

The administration is asking a judge who struck down the healthcare law to clarify that states must still implement it.