There are still about 4.7 million uninsured American children who are eligible for CHIP (Children's Health Insurance Program) or Medicaid and are not enrolled, says a new report published in the journal Health Affairs. The report estimated about 7.3 million American children were uninsured on an average day in 2008 - of those, 65% of them (4...

Democrats are likely to again push to give billions in health coverage assistance to Ground Zero workers when they return from their recess, Roll Call reports. "A Democratic leadership aide said Tuesday that the bill likely would get the green light for floor action shortly after the House returns Sept. 14 in conjunction with events planned to commemorate the ninth anniversary of the Sept...

Debunking Medicare Myths Kaiser Health News What's needed most today in American health care is innovative change which drives up productivity and value. With the right incentives, that's what the private sector can deliver, even as it's been clear for some time that the federal government cannot do likewise (James Capretta, 9/2)...

Health News Florida: "The Florida Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected a proposed constitutional amendment that targeted the new federal-health reform law, ruling that state lawmakers included misleading wording that could not be fixed. Justices, in a 5-2 ruling, upheld a circuit judge's decision to strip 'Amendment 9' from the November ballot. ...

Pawlenty's Order Pure Politicking The Bemidji (Minn.) Pioneer The move can be explained in no other way than in being a totally partisan decision, intended to shore up his conservatism in what will be a 2012 battle of who is more conservative to wear the Republican mantle for president (9/1)...

Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, a Republican, issued an executive order Tuesday instructing state agencies to reject discretionary federal funds that stem from the health overhaul, The Wall Street Journal reports. That makes "Minnesota the first state to formally restrict itself from taking some federal dollars under the law" and carries "political overtones for a possible presidential candidate...

The Census Bureau reported Thursday that federal "domestic spending increased a record 16 percent, to $3.2 trillion, in 2009 ... largely because of a boost in aid to the unemployed and the huge economic stimulus package enacted to rescue the sinking economy," The Washington Post reports. "Overall, the largest chunk of federal spending -- about 46 percent of the $3...

The Fiscal Times: A Medicare program that has agreed to pay for counseling for seniors who smoke but are not yet sick could help the program, and America's health system, lower costs. "Smoking costs the U.S. economy $97 billion annually in lost productivity, in addition to the $96 billion a year in direct health care costs, according to [the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services]...

A survey of hospital finances by Forbes found that "some American hospitals make 25 cents or more for every $1 in patient revenue they take in," Forbes reports. The list, "done by the American Hospital Directory, is based on operating income figures that hospitals must report to the federal Medicare program each year...

Kaiser Health News: Public support for the new health law slipped in August, "a development sure to stir concerns among the Obama administration and congressional Democrats seeking to shore up support for the law in the months leading up to the mid-term elections...

Modern Healthcare: Health reform has left "industry executives scrambling to project what will happen to revenue and expenses in the coming decade." Some are using models to guess what will happen when payments change for Medicare and Medicaid...

Canada should follow the lead of Quebec, Australia and the United Kingdom by publicly funding smoking cessation pharmacotherapies, states an editorial in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal). Some 5.5 million Canadians (19% of the population) currently use tobacco, a number that has not decreased in recent years...

As Reform Improves The Overall Market, Inefficient Insurers Could Take Hits Kaiser Health News We want to spend just a little less, so that we have more money for other purposes. And we want to spend just a little differently, so that we're getting a higher quality, more humane health care system (Jonathan Cohn, 8/30)...

The Wall Street Journal: "Faced with mounting debt and looming costs from the new federal health-care law, many local governments are leaving the hospital business, shedding public facilities that can be the caregiver of last resort. ...

Politico: The liberal health group Health Care for America Now is "fighting hard to help reelect lawmakers who voted for the [health reform] bill - even if it means not talking about it. ... HCAN activists say they are not dodging their key issue; rather, they want to keep pace with voter concerns, which have markedly shifted over the past year...

One in six Americans is now taking advantage of government anti-poverty programs, including more than 50 million on Medicaid, for which enrollment is up 17 percent since the recession began in December 2007, USA Today reports. "The program has grown even before the new health care law adds about 16 million people, beginning in 2014. That has strained doctors. ...

Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius today announced that more than 1 million Medicare beneficiaries have received prescription drug cost relief through the Affordable Care Act...

Instructions for state Medicaid directors to distribute some of the funding for electronic medical records through their programs beginning next year have been circulated by the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, American Medical News reports...

HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced the expansion of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services' (CMS) Rural Community Hospital demonstration program, through the Affordable Care Act. Up to 20 small rural hospitals in selected states will be eligible for enhanced reimbursement for inpatient services, in addition to the 10 hospitals already participating in the program...

Truth Catches Up To Democrats On Health Care CNN Americans told lawmakers in Washington that they wanted reforms that would lower costs; Democrats in Congress increased them. They said they wanted Medicare protected; Democrat leaders used it as a piggy bank, cutting hundreds of billions of dollars from Medicare to help pay for this massive new government expansion of health care (Sen...