President Obama called the Democrats' reform law a "crucial turning point for healthcare in the Latino community."

Venture capitalists launch new lobby group formed to free medical innovation from "our current regulatory environment": The National Venture Capital Association (NVCA) on Wednesday announced the creation of a new coalition designed to promote domestic investment in medical innovation. 

The new group — the Medical Innovation and Competitiveness (MedIC) Coalition — has three specific goals: (1) to lobby for medical innovation on Capitol Hill as healthcare reform is implemented; (2) to promote financial incentives that will encourage investors to launch medical ventures at home rather than abroad; and (3) to reform the Food and Drug Administration so new medical technologies will hit the market more quickly. 

“The U.S. healthcare system runs on innovation," Mark Heesen, NVCA president, said in a statement. "If capital and incentives dry up, the whole system will suffer. 

"This scenario could become a reality in the next decade as our current regulatory environment threatens to place our country at a disadvantage to foreign nations that are seeking to create more favorable conditions for innovators and investors,” Heesen added. 

"The game is ours to lose and we have no intention of losing it."

Beth Seidenberg, who will chair MedIC, said the new group is hoping to help stabilize what she calls "increasing uncertainty in the regulatory and reimbursement processes, healthcare reform implementation and the capital markets."

"Innovation has been largely absent from the public discussion on healthcare reform," said Seidenberg, a partner with the international investment firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. "If we don’t act now, our increasingly formidable global competitors will."

CMS to brief reporters on health reform's impact on projected spending — but don't hold your breath for news: Officials at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) will meet Wednesday morning with reporters at Washington's Press Club to discuss how the new healthcare reform law is projected to affect health spending trends over the next decade. 

But don't fret if you don't see any immediate headlines on the topic. The remarks are embargoed until 3 a.m. Thursday, to coincide with publication of a new report in the journal Health Affairs.

President Obama's new economic priorities — and Democrats' desperate desire to refocus on job creation ahead of the mid-term elections — could delay health bills after the August recess.

Sandra Eskin, director of the Pew Charitable Trusts' food safety campaign, tells The Hill that food safety legislation is "ready to roll" and could come up in the next to weeks. But, she added via e-mail, "I guess it depends on what happens with the small biz legislation/new economic proposals."

Regan Lachapelle, spokeswoman for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), said "food safety is still on a list of possible items that we could consider in the upcoming work period. We are still working on the schedule."

The Senate on Tuesday is still expected to take up two amendments to a small business bill that would affect a tax filing requirement created by the healthcare reform law. An amendment by Sen. Mike Johanns (R-Neb.) would eliminate the provision requiring businesses to report more purchases to the IRS.   

A substitute from Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) would scale down the tax filing requirement without eliminating it.

"We are still planning on having the vote," Lachapelle said.

The nation's trial lawyers are trumpeting a new study indicating medical liability consumes 2.4 percent of the nation's healthcare spending each year.

The report, according to the American Association for Justice (AAJ), "shows that limiting the rights of injured patients will do practically nothing to lower health care costs."

"Instead, our focus should be on preventing the 98,000 deaths that occur every year because of preventable medical errors," the lobbyist group said Tuesday in an e-mail.

The new study — published Tuesday in the journal Health Affairs — found the annual cost related to medical liability is $55.6 billion. Most of that spending ($45.6 billion) is related to defensive medicine — the tests, drugs and other procedures that doctors prescribe in order to limit the risk of being sued for malpractice.

The researchers said their findings indicate malpractice-related costs are neither insignificant nor a cure-all for the nation's skyrocketing health spending trends.

"The amount of defensive medicine is not trivial," Amitabh Chandra, a co-author of the study and public policy professor at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, said in a statement, "but it’s unlikely to be a source of significant savings."

Some Republicans disagree. The office of Sen. Chuck Grassley (Iowa), senior Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, said Tuesday that "$45.6 billion a year sounds pretty significant."

"We’re not sure why that’s considered a drop in the bucket to the study authors," a Grassley aide said in an e-mail. 

Reps. Michael McCaul (R-Texas) and Joe Sestak (D-Pa.) are hosting a panel of the nation's top cancer doctors next week for a Congressional Childhood Cancer Summit.

The Sept. 16 summit, to coincide with Childhood Cancer Awareness Week, is expected to address issues such as drug development, availability of treatment, access to clinical trials, survivorship and the impact of childhood cancer on families and communities. It also seeks to draw attention to several pieces of legislation currently stuck in Congress. 

Rep. Jackie Speier's (D-Calif.) Childhood Cancer Survivorship Research and Quality of Life Act creates National Institutes of Health grants to research cancer survivorship and improve follow-up care. And Sen. Sam Brownback's (R-Kan.) Creating Hope Act would reform the Food and Drug Administration's priority review voucher incentive program relating to tropical and rare pediatric diseases.

McCaul and Sestak are the founders and co-chairs of the Congressional Pediatric Cancer Caucus.

The Nebraska State Board of Education this month rebuffed a request from Gov. Dave Heineman (R) to support a direct repeal of the Democrats' new healthcare reform law.

Instead, Board members passed a much tamer resolution that registers their opposition to "unfunded mandates" without ever mentioning healthcare at all — a change that's being cheered by children's welfare advocates wary of efforts to pit children's health coverage against their education funding.

The episode began late last month, when Heineman sent a letter to state education leaders — including the members of the State Board — warning that the Medicaid expansion in the new healthcare reform law represents a threat to education funding, and therefore to education jobs. 

"The future of education is at stake," Heineman wrote. "Don't sit on the sidelines. I strongly urge you to support the repeal of the recently enacted federal health care law."

Heineman also touted the results of a new study — performed by Milliman, Inc. at the request of the governor's office — indicating that the Medicaid expansion would cost Nebraska between $526 million and $766 million over the next decade. 

"The results are potentially devastating to the state's budget," Heineman wrote. 

In response, State Board members last week considered a resolution calling for "the repeal of the unfunded Medicaid mandates contained in the [reform law]." The draft resolution also urged a replacement of the law "with alternatives that will not burden the states with unfunded mandates that threaten their fiscal stability."

It didn't fly. 

Instead, the State Board drastically reworked the language to exclude any references to Medicaid, the reform law or healthcare at all. The final version called on state officials "to oppose unfunded mandates and to protect the resources necessary for the provision of high quality education."  

It passed last Thursday by a vote of 7 to 0. 

Following the vote, Heineman issued a statement — all of 26 words long — applauding the board for "stating clearly and unequivocally that education is Nebraska’s top funding priority." 

Yet some children's welfare advocates say the victory is theirs. 

"We won in Nebraska," said Bruce Lesley, president of First Focus, a Washington-based children's welfare group.

Last week, Lesley had written to Nebraska's State Board, asking how the Medicaid expansion — all of which will be paid by the federal government through 2016 — could pose an immediate threat to education coffers.  

"It is simply unsound for anyone to threaten the budget for education spending in 2011 based on estimated spending on healthcare in 2017 and beyond," he wrote.

The episode wasn't lost on Sen. Ben Nelson. The Nebraska Democrat issued a statement last week slamming Heineman for using "misinformation to intimidate groups involved in all aspects of our children’s health, safety and education, pitting one against the other."

"What I’m hearing from Nebraskans," Nelson said, "is they don’t want this kind of divisive politics to be played."

The Department of Health and Human Services has released guidance for health plans seeking a waiver from the healthcare reform law's restrictions on plans' ability to place annual limits on essential health benefits.

The new law creates temporary restrictions on health plans starting Sept. 23. But the law also allows the annual limits to be waived "if compliance ... would result in a significant decrease in access to benefits or a significant increase in premiums."

The guidance, quietly issued Friday, applies only to plan years beginning between Sept. 23, 2010, and Sept. 22, 2011. The waiver is only valid for one year, and plans must reapply annually "in accordance with future guidance from HHS."

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A founder of the National Doctors Tea Party accuses the American Medical Association of putting profits before its members' interests.

Editorialists at The New York Times jumped this week into the hotly contested issue of whether doctors or nurses should be chiefly responsible for providing anesthesia care — and suggest that the cost savings related to nurse-administered treatments shouldn't be ignored. 

"It costs more than six times as much to train an anesthesiologist as a nurse anesthetist, and anesthesiologists earn twice as much a year, on average, as the nurses do ($150,000 for nurse anesthetists and $337,000 for anesthesiologists, according to a Rand Corporation analysis)," the Times editorialists wrote Tuesday. "Those costs are absorbed by various institutions and public programs within the health care system."

Under current Medicare rules, surgeons or anesthesiologists must oversee the care provided by certified registered nurse anesthetists (CRNA) in order for those treatments to be reimbursed. In 2001, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services allowed states to opt out of that requirement, which 15 states have done.

The different state models have allowed researchers to compare the outcomes of care delivered by CRNAs working alone to that of CRNAs monitored by a physician. In a report published last month, experts at the Research Triangle Institute found there was no measurable difference, in terms of quality of care, between the two models.

The anesthesiologist lobby has been quick to defend its turf, arguing that the years of training endured by physicians makes them better suited to administer treatments — particularly in those cases where complications arise on the operating table. Patients prefer having the more experienced doctors deliver those services, the anesthesiologists say.

The Times notes that the mortality rate surrounding anesthesia care is tiny in both cases. 

"From a patient’s point of view, it would seem preferable to have a broadly trained anesthesiologist perform or supervise anesthesia services, but, in truth, the risk is minuscule either way," the Times writes.

"As health reformers seek ways to curb medical spending, they need to consider whether this is a safe place to do it."