Obamacare Ruling Victory 5 To 4

The political stakes imbued in the high court's 5-4 ruling allowing the Affordable Care Act to stand were starkly evident by midday Thursday in Washington, as Obama and Romney, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, laid out clearly different visions when it came to the law, "Obamacare."

The opinion, written by Chief Justice John Roberts, who joined the court's liberals, determined that the act's individual mandate -- the requirement that individuals purchase health insurance, or face a penalty -- was constitutional as a tax.


Sen. Dan Coats, R-Ind., discusses his surprise over the health care ruling and says the decision puts the law "back into the hands of the American people."






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"I know there will be a lot of discussion today about the politics of all this, about who won and who lost," Obama said in remarks at the White House, in which he emphasized many of the law's benefits. "That discussion completely misses the point. Whatever the politics, today's decision was a victory for people all over this country whose lives are more secure because of this law and the Supreme Court's decision to uphold it."


Sen. Ben Cardin says with the ruling, the government can now more forward and give people the type of health care they need. Cardin stresses his hopes that Democrats and Republicans will work together to improve the health care system.

Related: Supreme Court upholds health care law

A few minutes earlier, Romney renewed his promise to seek the full repeal of the law from his first day in office.

"What the court did not do on the last day of its session I will do on my first day as president," Romney said. He called the court's opinion both bad law and bad policy.

Each candidate's comments underscored, though, the political dividing lines that w

Scientists Can Now Grow Functioning Liver From Stem Cells

Scientists have promised a lot of regenerative medicine will come from stem cells, but so far progress has been fairly slow: they can stimualte regrowth of heart tissue, make incredibly expesnive artifical blood, or—at best—construct a short piece of vein. Now, though, scientists are claiming they can grow functional liver.
Nature reports that a team of scientists from Japan has presented its works at a conference, and it's incredible. In fact, George Daley, director of the stem-cell transplantation program at the Boston Children's Hospital in Massachusetts, told Nature that "it blew [his] mind." Wow.
The researchers used stem cells created from human skin cells, then placed the cells on growth plates in a specially designed culture medium. Over the course of nine days, the cells started producing chemicals that a typical liver cell, otherwise known as a hepatocyte, would produce. They then added endothelial and mesenchymal cells—which form parts of blood vessels and other structural tissues within the body—to the mix, in the hope that they would be incorporated and begin to help the cells develop a structure akin to the liver.
The result was amazing: two days later, the researchers found the cells assembled into a 5-millimeter-long, three-dimensional lump. That lump was almost identical to something known as a liver bud—an early stage of liver development. From Nature's report:

"The tissue lacks bile ducts, and the hepatocytes do not form neat plates as they do in a real liver. In that sense, while it does to some degree recapitulate embryonic growth, it does not match the process as faithfully as the optic cup recently reported by another Japanese researcher. But the tissue does have blood vessels that proved functional when it was transplanted under the skin of a mouse. Genetic tests show that the tissue expresses many of the genes expressed in real liver. And, when transferred to the mouse, the tissue was able to metabolize some drugs that human livers metabolize but mouse livers normally cannot. "

While it's not perfect, it's the first time anyone has successfully created part of a functional human organ from stem cells produced from human skin. If scientists hadn't quite managed to deliver on the promise of stem cells so far, they have now. [Nature]
Image by Spirit-Fire under Creative Commons license

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Scientists Can Now Grow Functioning Liver From Stem Cells

Health Care Insurers Spent $100 Million To Defeat Obamacare

As the Supreme Court readies to announce their decision on the individual mandate portion of the health reform, it has emerged that the largest health care lobbying group in the country spent a total of $102.4 million in just 15 months to prevent Obamacare from becoming law in the first place.
In 2009 alone, America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) pumped $86.2 million into a conservative lobbying group, the US Chamber of Commerce, to combat President Obama’s health care reform plan. But with the added months of 2010 prior to the ACA’s March passage, AHIP piled on an additional $16 million to be used against the bill.
That staggering total, which the National Journal’s Influence Alley uncovered today, was not out in the open — rather, the funds were transferred through a secretive process and listed only by the organization as ‘advocacy’ spending:

The backchannel spending allowed insurers to publicly stake out a pro-reform position while privately funding the leading anti-reform lobbying group in Washington. The chamber spent tens of millions of dollars bankrolling efforts to kill health care reform.
The behind-the-scenes transfers were particularly hard to track because the law does not require groups to publicly disclose where they are sending the money or who they are receiving it from. [...]
The next year followed a similar pattern. In 2010, AHIP reported giving $16.5 million to unnamed advocacy organizations working on health care reform and the chamber reported receiving about $16.2 million from an undisclosed source, which the Alley has learned was AHIP. The $16.2 million accounted for about 8.6 percent of the total contributions and grants the chamber received that year.

This funneling scheme allowed health groups like AHIP to save face no matter whether the bill passed or not — if the bill failed, the groups figured, they would be able to point to their lobbying efforts against it. When it succeeded, AHIP and others remained quiet about any efforts against the legislation.
With the ruling coming down in the coming weeks from the Supreme Court, and with all the money spent to defeat the law, AHIP may be all to happy if it’s overturned.

Update

According to US Chamber Watch, athough AHIP only made contributions to the Chamber of Commerce during the first three months of 2010, it was still the single largest funder of the group for all of that year.

Health Care Insurers Spent $100 Million To Defeat Obamacare

OVERNIGHT HEALTH: House set to repeal device tax

As the Supreme Court’s healthcare decision nears, congressional Republicans are still hammering away at President Obama’s healthcare law. The House is scheduled to vote this week on two partial repeal bills, including one to eliminate the law’s controversial tax on medical devices. It could be one of the more politically interesting repeal votes in a while, because there is bipartisan opposition to the tax. Lawmakers from states with a big industry presence — such as Indiana, Minnesota and Massachusetts — have criticized the proposal in the past. Elizabeth Warren, the Democratic Senate candidate in Massachusetts, has also called for its repeal. Similarly, Republicans have framed repealing the tax as a way to help small businesses, saying the policy would stifle innovation. Their bill would also repeal new restrictions on the use of health savings accounts. Democratic Rep. Robert Andrews (N.J.) criticized the vote as a “waste of time,” just weeks ahead of a Supreme Court decision that could invalidate the entire healthcare law. Read more... 0 Comments

June 4, 2012, 4:00 pm Study: Caution needed in handling care for dual eligibles By Elise Viebeck Policymakers must be cautious in formulating plans to streamline care for some low-income elderly and disabled patients, according to an analysis published in the journal Health Affairs. Estimates about savings from new plans and demonstration projects must also be approached with skepticism, the authors wrote. The report emphasized that "one size will not fit all" and that specific subgroups of dual eligibles — people enrolled in both Medicare and Medicaid — will need programs specifically designed for them. Read more... 0 Comments

June 4, 2012, 2:58 pm Health groups press Congress for deadline on long-delayed FDA regulations By Sam Baker A coalition of healthcare advocates said Monday that Congress should force the Obama administration to issue new regulations on medical devices. The Advancing Patient Safety Coalition urged lawmakers to address the issue as they work out the differences between the House and Senate versions of a must-pass Food and Drug Administration bill. Every five years, Congress must reauthorize user fees the FDA collects from drug and device companies. Lawmakers traditionally use the bills to make additional changes to FDA policy. The last reauthorization, passed in 2007, called for a "unique device identification" (UDI) system to better track devices and monitor potential safety risks. But regulations to implement the UDI have been stuck at the Office of Management and Budget for nearly a year.

OVERNIGHT HEALTH: House set to repeal device tax