National Taxpayers Union Vice President Pete Sepp said in a call Tuesday that once the dust settles from the healthcare reform act repeal effort, the focus will quickly turn to several tax-related portions of the bill that President Obama might be willing to change.

The first is a provision in the act that limits the amount of individual spending that can be claimed in flexible spending accounts.

“Look for early action on that,” he said. He also predicted that elimination of the 1099 reporting requirement for small businesses would pass because concerns over the loss of $17 billion additional revenue it generates will fade.

He said there will be a growing “realization that the regulatory burden that these impose far outweigh by several factors the amount of revenue that will be raised over the scoring window.”

The next item Congress is slated to address is a provision that makes it more difficult to claim medical expense deductions.

Finally, Sepp said a debate over physician payment reimbursements will be a difficult topic for many Republicans to handle because “many Republicans campaigned with the line that their opposition to the healthcare bill was that it was making Medicare cuts."

“Well, there may be some cost reduction measures necessary in Medicare, even in the physician reimbursement area, so whether the Republicans who used that as a campaign issues would say that now this should be off the table for deficit reduction, will be an interesting thing to see,” he said.

More than half of U.S. states allowed more people to get on Medicaid in 2010 or made it easier for them to enroll, according to a new report, helping to prevent a steep increase in the number of uninsured Americans during the economic recession.

The report from the Kaiser Family Foundation credits the 2009 Recovery Act and last year's healthcare reform law for providing more funding to states while preventing them from dropping people from the rolls. Partly as a result, 14 states made it easier to enroll into Medicaid or the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP), while 13 expanded eligibility.

"This striking stability in public programs," says a summary of the report, "can be directly attributed to the federal government's decision both to provide temporary Medicaid fiscal relief to states through June 2011, and to require states to maintain their Medicaid and CHIP eligibility rules and enrollment procedures until broader health reform goes into effect."

The report warns, however, that states have a ways to go in terms of adopting technological improvements necessary to deal with the massive expansion of the Medicaid program called for under Democrats' healthcare reform law. By 2014, states will be required to cover people up to 133 percent of the federal poverty level.

The report comes as many states are considering steep budget cuts to rein in deficits caused in part by the poor economy. While the costly state-federal Medicaid partnerships prohibit major changes to enrollment eligibility, several states have already cut provider reimbursement rates and certain benefits.

And two states, the report explains, made permissible coverage reductions before the new healthcare reform law went into effect: Arizona capped enrollment in its CHIP program and New Jersey stopped enrolling parents covered through a CHIP waiver.

Welcome to The Hill's evening roundup of the day's health policy news and advance look at tomorrow's schedule.

Monday's health news

Giffords shooting fallout: The weekend shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) has thrown the timing of the healthcare reform repeal vote into question. Few on either side of the debate doubt that the divisive issue will resurface shortly, however.

Republicans made repeal a centerpiece of their platform in the 2010 midterm elections, and many voters expect them to deliver. Democrats, who lost the messaging war last year, view the repeal debate as a golden opportunity to sell the law to the American people.

Even the rhetorical truce is already ending. Rep. Chellie Pingree (D-Maine) for example has called on Republicans to rename the "Repeal the Job-Killing Health Care Law Act," arguing that Republicans "have a responsibility to help turn down the temperature on the nation's debate and help restore an element of civility to the discussion." Conservatives for their part have been pushing back against liberal attempts to tie Saturday's shooting to Republican rhetoric. http://bit.ly/hYnpIB

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Congressional budget scorekeepers' cost estimate last week of a bill to repeal healthcare reform is raising new doubts about the GOP's ability to defund it.

The Democrats' bill, according to the Congressional Budget Office, contains about $106 billion in authorizations that still need to be appropriated. But $86 billion of that, the CBO said in a letter to House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), is for continuation of existing activities, such as programs of the Indian Health Service and Federally Qualified Health Centers. 

Republicans may well want to keep funding even if the law is repealed, and CBO writes that "repeal of those ... authorizations would not necessarily result in discretionary savings of that amount." 

The repeal vote was postponed after the Arizona shootings, but Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers says it remains a top priority.

Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) acknowledged that Democrats have the numbers in the Senate to block any attempt to repeal healthcare reform.

"They've got the numbers," the chairman of the Senate Republican Conference said on CNN's "State of the Union." "If they all vote not to repeal, there won't be repeal."

However, he expects near-unanimous if not completely unanimous support for repeal from the 47 Republicans in the Senate.

"My sense is that Republicans will almost all, if not all, vote to repeal the healthcare law," he said.

Appearing alongside Alexander, Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said he thought a complete healthcare repeal did not have a chance of passage in the Senate.

However, he did expect a change to be made in the so-called 1099 provision of hte law, which imposes an additional tax filing requirement on small businesses for transactions of more than $600.

"I think there will be a change in the 1099 provision, he said.

Repealing healthcare reform was a major campaign promise by Republicans, and was slated to be one of the first steps taken by the new GOP-controlled House. A vote was originally scheduled for Jan. 12, but GOP leaders postponed its consideration following the shooting Saturday of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.).

While legislative business is on hold following the shooting, Alexander expects lawmakers to get back to its regular work shortly.

"We need to stop, pause and reflect," he said. "Then I think we're back to business."

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) said that he is in "constant communication" with congressional leaders.

Democrats and Republicans have sharpened their messages on the healthcare reform law as House Republicans prepare to repeal the overhaul next week.

The Medicare agency on Friday issued a proposed rule spelling out how hospitals will be rewarded for providing high-quality care for patients, as required by Democrats' healthcare reform law. Under the program, known as value-based purchasing, hospitals that perform well on measures relating to quality of care and patient experience would get higher Medicare payments.

"Today's proposal is a huge leap forward in improving the quality and safety of America’s hospitals for both Medicare beneficiaries and all Americans," Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Administrator Donald Berwick said in a statement. "The hospital value-based purchasing program will reward hospitals for improving patients' experiences of care, while making care safer by reducing medical mistakes."

Blair Childs, senior vice president for the Premier healthcare alliance, immediately praised the development in a statement Friday afternoon.

"The Premier healthcare alliance learned firsthand through [its] Hospital Quality Incentive Demonstration (HQID) pilot project that a well-designed value-based purchasing program can achieve better outcomes for patients," he said.

"We are eager to see these results spread nationwide as all hospitals receive added incentives to improve the quality and reliability of care."

The new program is set to start in 2013. CMS is accepting comments until March 8 and will issue a final rule next year.