Christine O'Donnell, the Tea-Party Republican vying to fill Joe Biden's Senate seat in Delaware, jumped head-first into the thorny healthcare debate.

The meeting comes after Franken held a summit in Minnesota last month with medical device manufacturers to hear their concerns.

Rep. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.), chairman of the House Energy and Commerce health subcommittee, vowed Friday to launch an investigation into the skyrocketing cost of long-term health insurance.

"I want to see the justification from the insurance companies," Pallone said in a statement. "I also want to see how prevalent the increases are."

The comments are a direct response to a recent report in a local New Jersey paper — the Ashbury Park Press — that state insurance regulators this year have approved premium hikes as high as 35 percent for long-term care policyholders in the state.

Such plans generally cover services for patients who can't perform day-to-day activities, like eating and bathing, on their own. 

"The whole idea of insurance is to make care affordable," Pallone said, "and long-term care can be a costly burden for families with loved ones in need of nursing care. They shouldn't be forced into bankruptcy to provide that care." 

The New Jersey Democrat was author of a provision of the new health reform law that creates a new model of long-term care insurance, focusing on home- and community-based care.

House Ways and Means Republicans on Friday renewed their request for a hearing with Don Berwick, administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). Their first request was on July 14.

In a letter to Committee Chair Sandy Levin (D-Mich.), the 15 Republicans on the panel reminded Levin that on July 22 the chairman had indicated a willingness to have Berwick before the committee "after [he] has been in office for a period of time." President Obama installed Berwick by recess appointment in early July.

Berwick is controversial because of his past statements that the government should "ration with our eyes open." Republicans have picked up on those statements and the healthcare reform law's cuts in Medicare payments to insurance plans and providers to argue that Berwick would curtail seniors' benefits.

"We are eager to hear his plans for CMS," the letter states, "because Medicare's own actuaries predict that the one-half trillion dollars in cuts to Medicare in the recently enacted health law could result in providers no longer treating seniors, jeopardizing their access to care."

Senate Finance Republicans Chuck Grassley (Iowa) and Orrin Hatch (Utah) sent a letter to Berwick himself on Monday asking him to request a hearing with their panel. 

West Virginia's Upper Big Branch (UBB) mine contained excess amounts of combustible coal dust when an explosion ripped through it with deadly results in April, the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) revealed Friday.

Kevin Stricklin, MSHA's head of coal mine safety, told reporters that 1,423 samples taken from the Massey-owned mine after the blast — representing roughly 80 percent of all samples taken — were out of compliance with MSHA coal dust standards.  

Under current rules, mine operators are required to dilute coal dust through a process known as rock dusting (which usually means dousing mine walls with limestone dust). Rock dusting should occur throughout the day, to make the highly combustible coal dust inert in case of an explosion.  

Some Massey miners, however, have said the company discouraged frequent rock dusting, which distracted workers from what was supposed to be their central focus: mining coal. 

Former Massey miner Chuck Nelson, for instance, said rock dusting was commonly done only at the end of the shift — or after miners were warned that safety inspectors were on site.

"They call and tell us to start hanging our curtains, start cleaning the coal dust up, start rock-dusting the ribs — get everything right because he’s on his way in there," Nelson said in an interview from his West Virginia home earlier in the year. "But as soon as they’re on their way outside — before they get outside — these line curtains are jerked down again. They’re back to doing the same old business as usual."

The official cause of April's UBB disaster, which killed 29 miners, has yet to be identified. But based on the sheer size of the blast, mine safety experts suspect that ignited methane, combined with the presence of coal dust, is the culprit.

Stricklin said Friday that more samples than 80 percent would likely have failed MSHA's tests just before the blast, which would have burned up much of the coal dust.

The details about the UBB's non-compliance with MSHA's coal dust standards were first reported Thursday by The Charleston Gazette's Ken Ward Jr.

The funds include loan repayments for health professionals and health career opportunity programs for disadvantaged students. 

Thirty-two years ago, then-President Jimmy Carter and the late Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) squared off over how to approach a Democratic push to enact comprehensive healthcare reform.

Carter, it would seem, hasn't forgotten the failure of that effort, and he's not mincing words about who's to blame.   

"The fact is that we would have had comprehensive health care now, had it not been for Ted Kennedy’s deliberately blocking the legislation that I proposed," Carter told 60 Minutes, during an interview to be aired Sunday. "It was his fault. Ted Kennedy killed the bill."

The 1978 feud revolved, not around policy, but around the issue of how the Democrats should proceed strategically. Kennedy, who died of brain cancer 13 months ago, had urged a strategy of passing a single bill, while Carter wanted to make the changes incrementally.

According to one Kennedy biographer, "There were political ways out of confrontation, but they were unlikely between rivals who did not understand each other,” The New York Times noted Friday.

Kennedy would go on to challenge Carter in the Democratic primary in 1980. Carter won that battle, only to be crushed by Ronald Reagan in the general election. 

Healthcare reform, combined with the health information technology provisions of last year's recovery act, offers states the tools they need to keep medical spending under control, Harvard economist David Cutler argues in a new report for the liberal Center for American Progress.

State and local governments spend about $300 billion on healthcare every year, with the federal/state Medicaid program for the low-income making up a significant chunk of that.

States "will have access to information on healthcare cost and quality, and can change payment information to reward low-cost, high-quality care more favorably," Cutler writes. "Applying these tools could lower the growth rate of medical spending by 1.5 percentage points per year, saving state governments $35 billion annually by the end of this decade and $140 billion annually by the end of the next decade."

In the report, Cutler outlines four steps to promote healthcare savings:

_ Tackle administrative costs: Lead an effort with insurers, providers and state government to reduce administrative costs by 50 percent over five years;

_ Push the information revolution: Set up all-payer databases to measure quality and demand quality improvements; encourage providers to invest in IT for federal stimulus money;

_ Lead payment reform: Work with Medicaid/SCHIP, private insurers and Medicare to design payment systems that bundle care and reward good performance;

_ Be open to new organizational forms: Remove barriers to coordination and entry into healthcare.

Census numbers out: Nearly 51 million Americans lacked health insurance last year, a jump of more than 4 million individuals from 2008, the U.S. Census Bureau reported Thursday. The findings mark the first decrease in the number of insured Americans since the Census Bureau began keeping those figures in 1987. The 50.7 million people without coverage represent 16.7 percent of the nation's population — up from 15.4 percent in 2008. http://bit.ly/aZb7qL

Democrats jumped on the report to make the case for healthcare reform: "The increase in uninsured Americans last year is clear evidence of how critical it was to take action to protect patients," Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) said in a statement, "and that’s exactly what the Affordable Care Act will do."

Among the other key findings:

- The real number of folks with insurance coverage dropped from 255.1 million in 2008 to 253.6 million last year;

- Private health insurance coverage plunged from 201 million to 194.5 million between 2008 and 2009, while government-sponsored programs saw their enrollment increase, from 87.4 million to 93.2 million;

- Employer-based coverage fell from 176.3 million in 2008 to 169.7 million last year;

- Medicaid enrollment jumped from 42.6 million to 47.8 million;

- Roughly 9.9 million of the uninsured in 2009 were not citizens, up from 9.5 million in 2008. The Census Bureau does not distinguish between those in the country legally and illegally. 

Voters not driven by healthcare reform: The new healthcare reform law will have little influence over voters' choices when they hit the polls in November, according to new survey results released Thursday. Forty-one percent of respondents said a lawmaker's vote on the reform law would "not make much difference" in choosing a candidate, according to the CBS News/New York Times survey. 

Furthermore, the percentage of voters (28 percent) saying they're "more likely" to choose a member who supported the reforms is precisely the same as those who said they'd be "less likely" to pick that candidate — a wash suggesting a certain futility in both party's efforts to use the law to their advantage in November's midterms. http://bit.ly/932qWt

Still, Democrats are hoping that popular provisions that start on the six-month anniversary of the law next Thursday — including a ban on denying coverage for sick children, first-dollar coverage of prevention services, an end to rescissions and restrictions on annual and lifetime caps — will get voters excited. "Next week we'll be talking about issues that come due on Sept. 23 that we're very proud of," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said at her weekly press conference Thursday.

Public health bills clear House panel: The Energy and Commerce Health subpanel on Thursday referred 16 public health bills to the full committee with recommendation for passage during markup next week. All but one, requiring the Department of Health and Human Services to set up voluntary data collection on the sexual orientation and gender identity of people who apply for HHS services or respond to its surveys, garnered unanimous bipartisan support. http://bit.ly/96F5VB

New Medicaid regs unveiled: The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services announced new proposed regulations Thursday implementing provisions of the healthcare reform law. The regulations establish transparency and public notice and comment procedures for experimental, pilot and demonstration projects approved for Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP). http://bit.ly/9qS6GH

Treasure trove of insurance information now available: The National Association of Insurance Commissioners has released the inaugural edition of its Accident and Health Policy Experience Report. The report includes aggregated countrywide and company-level premium information, loss ratios, number of policies, number of covered lives, market share and more. http://bit.ly/dAYKmP

Among the key findings: 

- In 2009, the Top 10 companies in the grand total (individual, group and other) business accounted for 45.5 percent of the overall market;

- Total premiums increased by 15.0 percent to $214 billion from 2008 to 2009;

- The number of policies increased by 2.6 percent from 2008 to 2009, while the number of covered lives decreased by 7.0 percent from 2008 to 2009.

Judge provides detailed healthcare lawsuit timeline: The federal district judge overseeing a multi-state challenge to the healthcare reform law has unveiled a detailed schedule for the suit's next steps. The hearing and oral argument on the motion for summary judgment will be held Dec. 16. http://bit.ly/ckKGZX

House to examine Johnson & Johnson 'phantom recall': House Democrats are asking the head of Johnson & Johnson to testify later this month over the April recall of 135 million bottles of infant and children's medicine. http://bit.ly/dcqi6w

New funding for health workforce training announced: Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and Mary Wakefield, administrator of the Health Resources and Services Administration, host a conference call with reporters to announce a significant investment in America’s health workforce being made possible through last year's Recovery Act. http://bit.ly/dvjzps

Mining news: The federal Mine Safety and Health Administration in the morning holds a news conference on its investigation of the explosion at Upper Big Branch Mine.