Leaders on the Senate Finance Committee are calling for input from the healthcare world on overhauling Medicare's flawed physician payment system.

Sens. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) and Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) wrote to healthcare providers Friday asking specific questions about repealing and replacing the sustainable growth rate (SGR), which necessitates an annual "doc fix."

"Our ultimate goal is for Medicare to pay physicians and other healthcare providers in a way that results in high quality, affordable care for seniors," the senators wrote. 

A pro-McConnell advocacy group is launching its first ad on Friday, touting Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's (R-Ky.) fight against President Obama's health care reform law.

Obama wades back into the healthcare debate

U.S. says it's on track to make health exchanges work

Obama's calorie display rules delayed by grocer blowback

President Obama will make a public defense of his signature healthcare law, using Mother's Day as a backdrop.

Well, there's at least one Democrat who's still saying good things about ObamaCare: House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.). Pelosi on Thursday said the healthcare law will be a "remarkable" thing once it's implemented, and that Democrats will be happy once it's in effect next year.

Pelosi's upbeat tone is a departure from recent Democratic hand-wringing over the law and its implementation. Many Democrats, notably Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.), have fretted openly about whether the White House is properly handling the law's rollout, and say they're afraid the law will be  a drag on the party in 2014.

Pelosi, though, said the healthcare law will be a good thing.

Read more...

A congressman who underwent gastric bypass surgery around the same time that Chris Christie (R) had lap band surgery is cheering on the New Jersey governor.

Rep. Tom Reed (R-N.Y.) disclosed last week that he has shed 60 pounds since his February surgery. The lawmaker, 41, told ITK that his doctor said it would add 20 years to his life.

Like Christie, Reed is also a dad. “Governor Christie’s decision to undergo surgery for the sake of his family is one I can certainly relate to, and one I applaud him for,” Reed told ITK in an email.

In a Tuesday interview with NBC News, Christie said his wife and four children were a big part of his decision to have the surgery: “I really just felt like for Mary Pat and for the kids that I needed to take a more, a more significant step to try to get my weight under control so that I could have a really active next half of my life.”

Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear said Thursday he supports the Medicaid expansion in President Obama's healthcare law — the last Democratic governor to sign on.

Republican-controlled legislatures have killed the Medicaid expansion in some states where the governor has embraced it, and the same could happen in Kentucky. But Beshear's endorsement at least sews up support from all of the country's Democratic governors, in addition to several high-profile Republicans.

Beshear said the Medicaid expansion would cover 308,000 Kentuckians — about half of the uninsured population in the state.

The House minority leader rejected the notion Democrats fear healthcare implementation will be election-year fodder for Republicans. 

The Obama administration has launched an online tool to bolster research into links between climate change and health and inform “more effective responses.”

The interagency U.S. Global Change Research Program on Thursday unveiled its Metadata Access Tool for Climate and Health (MATCH) platform.

“It is a publicly accessible digital platform for searching and integrating metadata ... extracted from more than 9,000 health, environment, and climate-science datasets held by six Federal agencies,” said Tom Armstrong, executive director of the interagency climate program, in a blog post.

The rollout dovetailed with President Obama’s order that directs federal agencies to make more data publicly accessible and easier to search, which The Hill's Ben Goad wrote about Thursday on our Hillicon Valley blog.