President Obama will address the National Association of Insurance Commissioners' annual meeting on Tuesday in Seattle.

Obama will discuss the implementation of the healthcare reform law, according to a White House press statement. The state insurance commissioners' group is playing a key role in that regard as it helps define key insurance regulations.

While in Seattle, Obama will also headline events for Democratic Sen. Patty Murray, who is up for reelection.

The Senate Health panel is scheduled to release a bipartisan food safety compromise later Thursday, along with a Congressional Budget Office score, several senators said. 

The bill would give the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) the power to recall tainted food, quarantine geographical areas and access food producers’ records. 

The compromise was worked out between six senators who have been working on the issue: Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee Chairman Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) and ranking member Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.); food-safety bill authors Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Judd Gregg (R-N.H.); and lead co-sponsors Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) and Richard Burr (R-N.C.). 

The House passed its version of food-safety legislation in July 2009.

In the Senate, outstanding issues included Sen. Dianne Feinstein's (D-Calif.) bid to ban the chemical bisphenol-A (BPA) from food and beverage containers and Sen. Jon Tester's (D-Mont.) attempt to exempt small farmers from some of the new regulations. It's not clear yet how the two issues were resolved. 

"Any 100-year-old-plus structure — like our nation’s food safety system — needs improvements," the six lawmakers said in a statement.

"With this announcement today, we aim to not just patch and mend our fragmented food safety system, we hope to reinforce the infrastructure, close the gaps and create a systematic, risk-based and balanced approach to food safety in the United States. 

"The FDA Food Safety Modernization Act will place more emphasis on prevention of food-borne illness and will provide new tools to respond to food-safety problems. We look forward to working with our respective leaderships to take up this bipartisan legislation as soon as possible." 

The Hill first reported on this development on Tuesday.

As Congress and the White House eye ways to rein in the exploding for-profit education business, some industry leaders are warning policymakers: Don't overstep.

Recently proposed Department of Education (DOE) rules could hobble for-profit medical colleges at a time when those schools are feeding more and more of the nation's ever-rising demand for health professionals, cautioned Randy Proto, CEO of the American Institute, a New York-based company that runs schools in Florida, New Jersey and Connecticut.

The rules would slow the growth of career colleges, Proto said in a recent phone interview, and "thwart our ability to meet that need."

Broadly, Proto wondered why the administration has singled out for-profit schools, while largely excluding traditional nonprofit institutions. That discrepancy, he warned, puts the for-profits at a distinct disadvantage — something that could harm the lower-income students who tend to enroll disproportionately in career schools.

The administration "is trying to define thresholds for certain types of programs and not others," he said. "The rules are being applied unequally."

The comments are timely. Career colleges have been under fire after a series of reports suggested that aggressive recruiting, shady marketing practices — even fraud — are common within the industry.

INSURANCE REGULATORS MEET: The National Association of Insurance Commissioners opens its annual meeting in Seattle Thursday.

The NAIC is tasked with helping define many insurance reform requirements, and it has a busy agenda to go over: http://bit.ly/96CfrY

On the menu for Thursday: Adoption of the new forms submitted by insurance companies to report quarterly and annual financial information to regulators, updated to take into consideration changes from the healthcare reform law.

Read The Hill's earlier story: http://bit.ly/dhbhzc

GLOBAL HEALTH: The Council on Foreign Relations announces its new interactive guide on global health policy: http://bit.ly/a7bkQ1

The guide examines the deficiencies in global health governance and offers concrete solutions for improvement. This is the latest component of the council's Global Governance Monitor after previous guides on climate change, nuclear nonproliferation, finance and oceans governance.

STATE IMPLEMENTATION: Maine launches website to explain health reform and Maine's plan for implementation: http://bit.ly/d2lvmi

HEALTH REFORM'S HIDDEN COSTS: Health insurers will face "debilitating impacts to their bottom lines" to meet the healthcare reform law's medical loss ratio requirements if their investment incomes decline significantly, according to Weiss Ratings.

Read the report: http://bit.ly/cdG3zE

NEW INSURANCE GROUP FORMED: The States Alliance for Balanced Insurance Regulation officially launched Wednesday to promote continued state regulation of insurance.

Read the press release: http://bit.ly/9Ls6Cs

MINE SAFETY: Federal Mine Safety and Health Review Commission hears mine safety cases: http://bit.ly/aaHqfg

The pharmacy and drugstore lobbies are strongly objecting to a new effort by the federal government to gather more data on drug prices in the Medicaid program.

The groups say the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) exceeded its legal authority when it recently put out a request for proposal requiring a "nationwide survey of consumer purchase prices" for drugs at retail pharmacies that participate in Medicaid. 

"CMS does not have the authority to post individual (retail survey prices), and is only authorized by (the health reform law) to post an 'average retail survey price'," the groups write in a letter sent Friday to Cindy Mann, director of the CMS Center for Medicaid, CHIP and Survey & Certification. The letter, obtained by The Hill, is signed by the American Pharmacists Association, the National Association of Chain Drug Stores, the National Community Pharmacists Association and the Food Marketing Institute.

"Furthermore," the letter continues, "we are greatly troubled by (a requirement in the request for proposal) which asks a contractor to collect and disclose wholesale prices that pharmacies pay to purchase drugs. We have identified no legal authority for CMS to collect and distribute pharmacy acquisition data."

The groups argue that posting such data for all to see can be easily misinterpreted, for example if consumers can't tell whether it includes costs borne by the pharmacies for dispensing the drugs.  

The letter closes by saying the signees are "committed to working with" CMS on the issue, but their objections immediately drew hackles from the companies that manage prescription drug benefits. Under pressure to reveal their own prices, pharmacy benefit managers are taking gleeful solace now that drugstores are being asked to do the same. 

"We can’t have a double standard in which drugstores are shielded from the same type of transparency they routinely demand of (Pharmacy Benefit Managers)," said Pharmaceutical Care Management Association President and CEO Mark Merritt. "This is especially true of the independent drugstore lobby, which has for years demanded more 'transparency' of others in the pharmacy supply chain. Now, they have an opportunity to provide more of it themselves."

Legislation introduced by Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) and supported by drugstores would require pharmacy benefit managers to report their payments to pharmacies along with payments they receive from health plans and drug manufacturers. The benefit managers say that would make it impossible for them to play pharmacies off of one another, and lead to higher prices for customers.

"Regardless of the substance of CMS’ request, independent drugstores have only themselves to thank for bringing this upon the retail pharmacy community," Merritt said. "Since independent drugstores are now the least transparent part of the pharmacy supply chain, it should be no surprise that their own decade-long campaign for ‘transparency’ has finally come full circle."

Massey Energy on Wednesday released pictures of a crack in the Upper Big Branch (UBB) mine, which exploded with tragic results in April.  

The Virginia-based coal giant has suggested a huge crack near a mine-harvesting machine could be the source of the methane gas that fueled the blast.

“The crack, along with other potential sources in the mine, need to be fully examined by company, federal and state investigators as they continue the ongoing probe into the UBB mine accident,” Shane Harvey, Massey's vice president and general counsel, said in a statement.

Release of the pictures came just a few hours after federal mine-safety officials told reporters they've seen no evidence of a massive crack in the UBB to back Massey's claims.

Massey is under federal investigation following April's UBB disaster.

Emergency room visits increased at twice the rate of growth of the American population between 1997 and 2007, according to a new study in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Medicaid patients, the study points out, account for "a large proportion of the increase." That's an important reminder that the healthcare reform law's expansion of Medicaid coverage to 15 million more Americans by 2019 is not a guarantee that they'll have access to care.

"Medicaid pays so poorly in many states that physicians limit the number of Medicaid patients they will see," said Angela Gardner, president of the American College of Emergency Physicians. "When these patients get sick but can't get in to see a physician, they often wait until an illness has worsened to the point that they need care in an emergency department. This is important to remember, especially as the nation implements the new healthcare reform law. Health plans must provide fair payment for services, or patients will suffer."

Health plans will lobby lawmakers and regulators over the August recess for greater flexibility to avoid some provisions of the healthcare reform law.

An internal memo to members of America's Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) obtained by The Hill offers health plans three suggestions for "strengthening and clarifying" regulations regarding grandfathered plans.

Or in other words: ways to remain exempt from key reforms.

It's still too early to say methane monitors weren't tampered with prior to April's deadly mine blast at the Upper Big Branch (UBB), federal mine-safety officials said Wednesday. 

"We believe there are still units missing," Joe Main, the head of the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA), told reporters during a phone call. "No conclusions have been reached at this time." 

The statement flies directly in the face of claims made earlier in the week by Massey Energy, the Virginia-based coal giant that owns the UBB. The company said Monday that a "thorough examination of the methane monitors from the UBB mine longwall face area conclusively confirms that the equipment was not tampered with or disabled."

"Additionally," Massey attorney Shane Harvey said in a statement, "the tests verified that on the day of the UBB mine accident, these sensors were in working condition and capable of automatically shutting down the longwall in the event that methane readings exceeded safety thresholds."

Not so, MSHA officials said Wednesday.