Obama inks health care talking points

He tries to market the overhaul to voters as midterms approach.

By Ambreen Ali

President Obama put the spotlight back on health care Tuesday when he held a town hall with senior citizens about a rebate check under the recently passed overhaul.
After talking about the Gulf Coast oil spill and financial regulation for weeks, the president used the opportunity to get in some pre-election jabs at Republicans.
"They still think that none of this should have happened, they don't think you should be getting these rebates," he said at a senior center in greater D.C. as seniors across the nation phoned in to listen.
Obama's appearance was part of an ongoing effort by the White House to highlight favorable aspects of the law.
Senior citizens will get a $250 check to offset the Medicare Part D donut hole left by prescription drug costs. The president addressed concerns about potential fraud and cautioned seniors to be wary of such scams.
But Obama wasn't there just to discuss the rebate, as the Washington Post reports:

For the president, the public relations event is an effort to move past the year of hearings, speeches and protests. But on Capitol Hill, the two parties -- and particularly the Republicans -- are still arguing about health care.

Republicans are still talking about repealing the law.
"The administration and congressional Democrats think the debate over health-care reform is in the rear-view mirror, but they couldn't be more wrong," Indiana Republican Rep. Mike Pence told the Post. "House Republicans will not rest until we repeal Obamacare lock, stock and barrel."
Conservative John Goodman previewed what that could look like in a column in Health Care News .
"Although it's too early to tell, next year we may have a very different Congress in Washington," he began, listing a series of steps conservatives could take to reduce the impact of the health law.
Goodman advised that Republican lawmakers repeal state-specific benefits in the health plan, such as the Medicaid funding promised to Massachusetts and Vermont. Next up in his plan is to get rid of employer mandates and small business fees.
Some states continue to fight the health law, too.
Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinnelli argued that Congress went beyond its jurisdiction by passing the bill in a court filing Monday, the Virginian-Pilot reports.
A state law bans imposing health care mandates on Virginians, but the federal law would overrule that unless a judge intervenes.
"If the government prevails... then Congress will have been granted virtually unlimited power to order you to buy anything," Cuccinnelli said in a statement.
Other states are sampling new approaches touted in the overhaul.
Pennsylvania has spent millions of dollars on "patient-centered medical homes" that are supposed to help streamline efforts among providers.
The pilot program basically assigns a primary-care doctor to oversee treatment for complicated or long-term illnesses. The provider works with colleagues and an oversight group to ensure that there is no doubling of efforts or wasted resources.
Instead, the creation of a statewide clearinghouse for medical homes has increased costs as well as personnel needed to treat patients, the Wall Street Journal reports.
The article notes that there are cost benefits in the long term when doctors coordinate what they do and eliminate redundancies or inefficiencies. The medical home approach can also make it cheaper and easier to control long-term illnesses like diabetes.
There are more hiccups when it comes to updating health technology.
Democrats got a head start on updating dated hospital equipment and digitizing patient records by included money for that in the 2009 stimulus package.
But the program's eligibility criteria has proven too strict for even the most tech-savvy of health providers, the New York Times reports.
Health information technology experts at premier institutions like Kaiser Permanente and Mayo Clinic have complained to the White House that the plan sets unrealistic goals and unachievable deadlines.
Some told the Times that "the issue offered a cautionary tale of what could happen when good intentions meet the reality of America’s fragmented health care system."
Ambreen Ali writes for Congress.org.