There’s still plenty of “repeal the bill” debates circulating around the blogosphere.

Hot Air’s Ed Morrissey, jumping on an argumentd advancd in an WSJ commentary on the subject, notices that “backers of the bill have begun calling it a tax rather than a mandate in an effort to play a rhetorical shell game with the courts and to avoid having the core of their efforts ruled unconstitutional.   But will that fool the Supreme Court at all?”  Morrissey continues, ”If nothing else, it shows that the backers of ObamaCare have a lot less confidence in the “Good and Welfare” clause than they have argued — and for good reason, even apart from the fact that it doesn’t exist.”

Wonk Room’s Igor Volsky responds to remarks by Senate Majority Leader John Boehner in which he calls for the health law’s repeal but also notes some Republican ideas in the law. Volsky writes, “If Boehner is unwilling to repeal the Republican ideas in the health care law, he’ll have to preserve a good deal of the legislation, which at its core is built on the Republican principles of personal responsibility and managed competition.”

Critical Condition’s John R. Graham responds to news that Calif. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger supports the new health law: “He’s just become the first Republican governor to endorse Obamacare and pledge that his state’s government will implement it, ASAP. Governor Schwarzenegger had previously criticized the ‘Cornhusker kickback’ (which gave an extra Medicaid bailout to Nebraska), but not on principle. He just thought that the federal government should give the same kickback to every state — which it did in the “reconciliation” bill.”  Graham also hypothesizes that Schwarzenegger’s support comes in part the fact that he’s not able to run for reelection.

In another edition of “Side Effects of ObamaCare,” Heritage’s Kathryn Nix looks at reports about the structure of new federal high-risk pools and says, “The risk pools are just one way in which the architects of Obamacare passed costs on to states to maintain a tenuous claim that the legislation was “deficit-neutral.”  The expansion of Medicaid will cost states billions in the long run, since federal matching rates will decrease in future years.”

On the White House Blog, White House Office of Health Reform Director Nancy Ann DeParle lists the parts of the health care law that have been implement so far and adds, “ In the weeks ahead, we’ll be expanding our public education campaign and doing more to ensure you have the facts about reform.”

Health Beat’s Maggie Mahar looks at headlines following a “breakthrough” FDA approval of a “breakthrough” prostate cancer treatment—that doesn’t prevent or cure prostate cancer. It doesn’t save lives,but instead “extends the lives of men suffering from late-state prostate cancer by an average of 4 months.” Mahar writes that shareholders and scientists both stand much to gain from the new advance, although “For some patients and the doctors who treat them, it’s good news—if patients can afford the drug  But four extra months and a 25% risk of serious side effects can’t really be called great news.”

On the Health Care Blog, hospital CEO Paul Levy reacts to a report that the U.S. Department of Justiceis investigating possible antitrust violations by Partners HealthCare in Massachussetts, asking, if the lack of data about quality of care “—given the paucity of transparency about clinical outcomes — create a prima facie case that there is no demonstrable clinical benefit from Partners’ market power and its resultant higher prices? Perhaps the answer depends on who has the burden of proof in anti-trust cases. Does the government have to prove that there is no demonstrable clinical advantage, or does Partners have prove that there is?”

And finally, the Healthcare Economist hosts the latest edition of the Health Wonk Review (NBA play-off themed), a biweekly roundup of health policy blogging.

A few bloggers are arguing about the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services report last week on the cost of the new health law, while others take on the “Medicare dcoc fix” and several criticize House Democrats’ response to accounting decisions made by large companies.

James Capretta has a key question: “But the estimates that the actuary has produced for the health bill so clearly contradict what the president has said the bill will do that the administration is in an awkward position, to say the least. So awkward in fact that the administration has stamped every memo put out by the actuary during the entire health debate with this disclaimer: “The statements, estimates, and other information provided in this memorandum are those of the Office of the Actuary and do not represent an official position of the Department of Health and Human Services or the Administration.” Which raises the question: If the actuary isn’t producing the administration’s health care cost projections, who is?”

Wonk Room’s Igor Volsky thinks some Republicans are buying into conspiracy theories: “Now, the conservative American Spectator is claiming that the administration purposely delayed the release of a recent Center for Medicare and Medicaid Service’s (CMS) report — which found that national expenditures would increase by 0.9% under health reform — until after a key Congressional vote on health reform.” Apparently CMS’ chief actuary Richard Foster has said the story is “completely inaccurate.”

The American Spectator’s blogger The Prowler responded: ”Our sources stand by the facts that prior to final passage of the health care reform bill on Sunday, March 21, the Office of the Actuary had provided senior leaders inside HHS with data that indicated the then-bill would increase the cost of health care and impose higher costs on Americans. And that data was not provided to anyone publicly until after the legislation was passed.”

Reason’s Peter Suderman looks at the spat and says, “On the other hand, the existence of the earlier report means that even if HHS leadership didn’t actively attempt to delay the release of the new analysis, they—as did anyone else who was paying attention—knew well in advance of the law’s passage that CMS was projecting that ObamaCare would drive overall spending upwards.”

Elsewhere, The Washington Post’s Ezra Klein critiques Republican arguments about the so-called “Medicare Doc Fix,” saying, ”What some Republicans are trying to do is add the doc fix into the Affordable Care Act. That is to say, they are trying to add the repeal of a Republican policy passed in 1997 into the cost of a Democratic bill being passed in 2010. But that’s a bit like adding the cost of the Iraq War onto the bill, or maybe the Bush tax cuts. It’s true that those were misguided, costly policies. But they’re not part of the Affordable Care Act. They’re part of the baseline that the Affordable Care Act changes.”

Hot Air’s Ed Morrissey digs into why House Energy and Commerce Committee chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif., canceled a hearing about companies write-downs after being required to disclose tax breaks for retiree health benefits. Morrissey says, “To some extent, though, this entire episode was a farce. Democrats knew full well that they had ended the tax credit for the subsidy that keeps retirees on private, employer-based prescription coverage. They did that deliberately in order to gain $5.4 billion in revenue to close the gap for the CBO analysis of ObamaCare. That money comes right off of the balance sheets of private industry — in fact, Democrats counted on it. Now the private sector has $3.4 billion less to invest in new jobs and expansion (with more writedowns coming), plus Democrats have incentivized these companies to dump their retirees into the overextended Medicare Part D program. Small wonder Waxman’s colleagues convinced him to call off the hearing.”

The Daily Caller’s Jonathan Strong has more: he says “Publicly, Waxman said the investigation showed the companies’ disclosures were properly filed. But a new report from committee Republicans reveals the documents Waxman obtained included embarrassing evidence that the health-care law could drive up insurance premiums and force employers to dump employees from their health plans.”

And The Wall Street Journal’s Katherine Hobson continues to track track industry announcements related to the health overhaul: “Among the tidbits it found in SEC filings: surgical-equipment maker Intuitive Surgical is warning that a medical devices tax may lower profits and have a material effect on its business.”

On the Altarum Institute’s Blog, Richard Graboyes, a health care adviser at the National Federation of Independent Business, gives his take on the law’s potential effects on small businesses: “Finally, it’s worth noting that many physician offices, laboratories, and other health care providers are themselves small businesses. The increase in administration, taxation, and uncertainty will affect these businesses as well. Like other small businesses, some will not survive the changes. And that will occur at the very moment that an estimated 30 million people gain health insurance and, hence, access to health care. Supply-side constraints could push costs upward; for small businesses, high costs were the problem in the first place. Small businesses can be fragile things. For many of our least advantaged residents, they are the entry point into the American economy. These firms will be severely tested as the new health reform law unfurls.”

And Brad Wright of Wright on Health recommends some of his favorite books on health care policy.

Posts include contributions to Health Affairs from Don Berwick, blog items from the AHCJ conference and revelations that some health insurers invest their profits in fast food companies.

Cato’s Chris Edwards writes, “Most people know about the individual mandate in the new health care bill, but the bill contained another mandate that could be far more costly. A few wording changes to the tax code’s section 6041 regarding 1099 reporting were slipped into the 2000-page health legislation. The changes will force millions of businesses to issue hundreds of millions, perhaps billions, of additional IRS Form 1099s and related W-2s every year. It appears to be a costly, anti-business nightmare. … I’m stunned that there wasn’t a broader debate before such a costly mandate was enacted. If it goes into effect, it will waste vast quantities of human effort in filling out forms, reworking computer systems, collecting and organizing data, and fighting the IRS.”

Brad Wright of Wright on Health points to a new Harvard study that found “health insurers take the money they make off of you and I and invest it in–of all things–fast food corporations. Do you need more proof that they don’t want us to be healthy? If we stay well, they win–because they keep our premiums and don’t have to pay out claims. If we get sick, they win–because they get a cut of all that money we’ve been spending on Big Macs. It’s a win-win business model for them and a lose-lose deal for us.”

Health Affair’s Chris Fleming links to several contribuions to the journal from new Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services nominee Don Berwick, including a piece published last year in which he surveys the debate surrounding how the concept of “patient-centeredness” should be defined and implemented.

The Washington Post’s Ezra Klein posts two graphs from a CMS report looking at the number of uninsured with and without reform.  Several bloggers fretted last week that spending would go up based on a new CMS chief actuary report, but Klein writes, “So though total spending nudges up (though by the end of the first 10 years, it’s coming back down), spending per insured person actually comes down.”

Insure Blog looks at a dispute over raising rates between insurer Blue Cross and Maine.  The court decided to limit Blue Cross’s rate increases, and Bob Vineyard reacts: “Blue will agree to write business at the lower rate and be forced to take other action such as restricting benefits on new applicants, or they could pass on the rate hike on renewals but leave new business rates in compliance. The other thing Blue can do is decide to leave the state. In that same vein they can stop offering individual major med business and concentrate on other lines (such as group) that is potentially more profitable. Regardless of what Blue does, the consumer will ultimately lose. This scenario will play out on a national scale as well as Obamacare rolls out.”

Wonk Room’s Igor Volsky finds Sen. Charles Grassley a bit hypocritical: “Last month, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) — a vocal opponent of the new health care law — issued a press release taking credit for some provisions in the new health care law. ‘The health care legislation signed into law yesterday includes provisions Grassley co-authored to impose standards for the tax exemption of charitable hospitals for the first time,’ the release boasted.”

The Association of Health Care Journalists held their annual conference over the weekend.  Check out their blog for info on different sessions, including a prediction of “hand-to-hand combat’ on the health law by Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius.

Bloggers are reacting to a Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services Chief Actuary report on the costs of the new health law and other health policy news.

The Washington Post’s Ezra Klein writes, “First, be clear about what’s being estimated. The Congressional Budget Office’s estimates look at the deficit. CMS is looking at total national health expenditures. This often confuses people into thinking that there’s conflict between the two sets of numbers when there isn’t … All in all, I think the report makes health-care reform look pretty good. A one percentage point increase in spending in return for covering 34 million people? That’s a good deal, I think. But your mileage may differ.”

Hot Air’s Ed Morrissey declares: “We’ve heard a lot of nonsense about ObamaCare and its fiscal discipline coming from its authors, advocates, and the national media.  We’re finally starting to get the truth, but only after the bill became law.  The electorate needs to punish all of those who voted for this disaster despite its deep unpopularity and work to defund it in the short term and repeal it when possible.”

Heritage’s Ernest Istook reacts: “Government actuaries—the official bean counters for national health care—just released the bad news from analyzing how President Obama’s new law affects medical costs and insurance. …Unfortunately, it is not unusual for politicians to promise one thing and then deliver something totally different. But the enormity of this law—re-shaping one-sixth of our economy—places Obama’s bait-and-switch in a class by itself.”

Time’s Kate Pickert writes, “This sounds pretty bad, right? Well, it is – if you consider it in a vacuum. The truth is the actuary who wrote the report, Richard S. Foster, authored a nearly identical report released January 8, 2010. Some of his figures changed in the interim – he wrote about the Senate bill in January and this week’s report includes changes made by the reconciliation package that altered the Senate bill – but overall, Foster’s assessment is the same. … The bottom line is that no one knows for sure if health reform will ‘bend the curve’ of increasing medical spending.”

The American Spectator’s Philip Klein looks at another study: the new Congressional Budget Office report that predicts four million people will end up paying a penalty for not obtaining insurance.  Klein thinks the study underestimates the numbers: “To be clear, these numbers underestimate the full cost of the mandate. To start with, the estimates don’t include those Americans who will decide to purchase insurance in response to the mandate. If somebody otherwise wouldn’t choose to purchase insurance but because of the mandate ends up paying thousands of dollars in of premiums, that represents a cost, too. On the flip side, if CBO is overestimating those who will decide to purchase insurance, then it means that more will end up paying the penalty.”

John Goodman writes that, “Senior citizens are by far the biggest losers in health reform.”

Wonk Room’s Igor Volsky interviews health policy expert Peter Harbage about a Reuter’s story that insurer WellPoint specifically canceled policies of women diagnosed with breast cancer.  Volsky writes, “Harbage says that there are at least three things lawmakers can do to strengthen the existing legislation: consumer education, prior review and data tracking. ‘Third party review of recissions is realistic. Having the state review every rescission before it’s made is something that could happen. At a minimum, you could have states track who’s being rescinded. They don’t even know when a rescission occurs. Regulators could be much more proactive in educating people about their rights. People generally have no idea where they can go or who they can turn to,’ Harbage said.”

Health economist Uwe Reinhardt takes a detailed look at taxation on the New York Times’ Economix. Reinhardt thinks increased taxes in the U.S. are inevitable, and declares: “So, my friends, get ready for the inevitable: Before this decade is out, whether you like it or not, the United States will have a value-added tax, just as they have long had in most of the world. The VAT will not be a substitute for the income tax (which, ideally, I wish it would be), but a complement to it, to supplement what can be had through income taxes.”

And last but not least, the Association of Health Care Journalists is blogging some of their annual conference at Covering Health.

Bloggers look at a Hill staffer’s move to a lobbying firm, Utah’s reform effort and whether nurse practitioners should be allowed to do more.

The Washington Examiner’s Timothy Carney reports on Arshi Siddiqui,  a key Nancy Pelosi staffer whose portfolio includes comprehensive health insurance reform legislation, the economic recovery package, and financial recovery and stimulus bills, is leaving Capitol Hill to work for a lobbying firm.  Carney describes her portfolio as “a compendium of corporate welfare: the bailout, the stimulus, and a health-care bill that mandates private health insurance and subsidizes drug companies until they blush.” And he uses the example to make a point: “This is why Obama cannot simultaneously increase government control over the economy and reduce the influence of K Street and special interests. Big Government is the mother’s milk of the special interests.

The Heritage Foundation released a paper on health reform efforts in Utah, which is allowing employers to offer health benefits on a “defined contribution” basis.  Kathryn Nix writes, “Other states, and the nation as a whole, should take as a model not only Utah’s consumer-centered policy design for health reform, but also the success of Utah’s bottom-up, consensus-building approach to the reform process itself—which resulted in overwhelming, bi-partisan approval of the legislation by the state’s legislature.”

Insure Blog’s Henry Stern examines why Aetna is discontinuing the sale of a popular health insurance account product. Turns out because many employers were covering the entire deductible, utlitzation increased (high deductible plans are theoretically supposed to do the opposite…)  Stern also says, “Aetna’s actuaries seem to believe that a $2500 deductible is too low. While that might seem counter-intuitive, I’m not convinced that it is. Think about it: a typical co-pay plan with a $1000 annual deductible would actually incur $3000 in total out-of-pocket costs. By contrast, the maximum exposure on that HSA plan is about 17% less, with a lower premium, to boot! So one can see the attraction if the product is being ‘gamed.’ It’s a shame, really, because the point of these plans is to encourage consumer participation in the process, not to over-utilize.”

On The Health Care Blog, Paul Levy, President and CEO of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, points to a new article in the Annals of Internal Medicine that questions the methodology used for U.S. News & World Report’s hospital rankings.  Levy writes, ”Given the importance attributed to the U.S. News ranking, this article is bound to raise concerns. I know that the folks at the magazine have worked hard over the years to make their rankings as objective as possible, and it will be interesting to see their response to Dr. Sehgal’s critique.”

Meanwhile, The Atlantic’s Joshua Green wonders if “the public option might not be dead,” following statements made by House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman Tuesday.

And Health Beat’s Maggie Mahar looks at debates over whether nurses should be given more scope of practice responsbilities.

Bloggers examine a number of potential consequences of the new health overhaul law.

Katherine Hobson of The Wall Street Journal’s Health Blog looks at potential financial losses to pharmaceutical companies from changes in the Medicaid program under health reform: “But analysts say that not all pharma companies will be equally affected; product mix matters a lot. Lilly didn’t break out the financial impact of different provisions in health-care changes, but did cite higher discounts to Medicaid as one factor. The company’s anti-psychotic Zyprexa and its diabetes product portfolio give it fairly broad exposure to Medicaid.”

In another edition of “Side Effects of ObamaCare,” Heritage’s Kathryn Nix says doctors are frustrated and demoralized by the higher penalties for not complying with regulations in the Medicare program.  So much so, in fact, “There is the very real prospect of many doctors simply giving up or refusing to practice under the government’s avalanche of new rules and regulations,” Nix writes. And she explains how the government’s reach is only going to grow:  “Under Obamacare, this sort of bureaucratic intervention is no longer limited to Medicare. The new law creates an Institute for Comparative Effectiveness Research, which will define best practices using population-based research.  This will be used to create government-approved standards for the practice of medicine—deviant physicians will pay a penalty for failure to comply.”

Economix’s Uwe Reinhardt looks at write-offs from large corporations reflecting the end of a deduction for retiree health benefits and explains, “If we take, say, 10 to 20 years as the period for these extra future annual cash payments to the I.R.S., then for AT&T  they might fall somewhere between $50 million and $100 million per year.  In 2007, AT&T’s net after-tax income was about $12 billion. In 2009 it was $12.5 billion. A rough estimate therefore is that the added annual taxes AT&T must pay as a result of the health care bill are likely to run somewhere between 0.4 percent and 0.8 percent of net income — less than 1 percentage point. They might even run less than 0.4 percent.”

Hot Air’s Ed Morrissey points to a New York Times article on the individual insurance market in New York state–which is under stricter constraints than most– and lashes out at the New York Times coverage of the situation during hte health care overhaul debate:

If nothing else, this proves a couple of points that critics have made all along.  The mandates are nothing more than a way to get the young to create a proxy welfare state by forcing them into a usurious insurance model.  It does nothing to reduce actual costs, and in fact makes cost increases both more likely and more amplified.

Finally, this problem has unfolded in New York for years.  The premium problem in individual markets — the very kind that ObamaCare requires — were well known to the New York Times.  They had almost a year to report this during the health-care debate before a vote was taken.  Instead, they report it almost a month after Congress passed the bill, and stuck it in the Regional section where national readers might have missed it.  Shameful.

Insure Blog’s Bob Vineyard looks at the requirements to participate in a new high risk pool set up by the health care law and finds they come up short because participants must be uninsured before joining: ” The risk pool won’t help those in high cost, guaranteed issue states like NY, ME and MA (home of Romneycare). But how about those who reside in the 34 states with risk pools that are paying up to 200% of the standard rate for risk pool coverage?  Like the Soup Nazi in Seinfeld, no Obamapool for you. So by doing the responsible thing and paying high health insurance premiums through an existing risk pool, you will be denied access while those who stayed out of a risk pool will be accepted.”

Wonk Room’s Igor Volsky reviews recent comments from former New York Gov. George Pataki on health reform, who appears to be back-tracking on previous claims that the Massachusetts individual mandate law is unconstitutional.  Pataki launched a new group, Revere America, which “will be going to be in all 50 states to mobilize the grassroots and ‘get over a million e-mail addresses of people who would support us in working to repeal ObamaCare and work with us to replace it with true health care reform.’”

Critical Condition’s James Capretta predicts how Democrats might try to close the federal budget gap in the next few years.  Capretta writes: Look at the recently enacted health-care bill. It includes large cuts in Medicare’s payments to hospitals, nursing homes, and others. These cuts aren’t calibrated based on quality or efficiency. They are across-the-board cuts hitting every service provider. And the bill also stands up a new independent board that is charged with essentially enforcing a cap on overall Medicare spending beginning in 2015. But the only changes in Medicare the board can recommend to stay within the cap are more reductions in provider-payment rates. The board can’t touch the Medicare benefit, much less propose a [Congressman Paul] Ryan-style move toward more choice and market competition. No, the only option is more and deeper price controls.”

And a lot of bloggers are buzzing about political journalist’s Marc Ambinder’s public and personal piece in the Atlantic this month where he writes about having bariatric surgery and the obestiy epidemic in the United States.

Bloggers interview a key labor supporter of the health overhaul, report on a dermatologist who says he’ll close shop before 2014 unless the new health law is repealed and challenge a Bill O’Reilly assertion. In addition, a new blog to follow fiscal issues — including health care implementation — launches.

Ezra Klein asks out-going Service Employees International Union President Andy Stern what he learned from the health overhaul battle. Stern responds: “Focus and tenacity matter… And the partnerships we’ve built with Wal-Mart and Better Health Care Together repositioned, somehow, the health-care debate. The fact that we could do things with the Business Roundtable and talk about what’s good for America competitively, not just what’s good for American workers, taught me that you can actually create an environment that makes change easier.”

The Daily Caller’s Gauthan Nagesh reports that “a few patients in Scottsdale, Ariz., got a small taste of life under Obamacare last week when they arrived at their dermatologist’s office only to see a sign with the following taped to the front door:

“If you voted for Obamacare, be aware these doors will close before it goes into effect.” The note is signed Joseph M. Scherzer M.D. and includes the following addendum: “****Unless Congress or the Courts repeal the BILL.”

Critical Condition’s Avika S. A. Roy says OECD estimates rank U.S. per-capita public health spending the third highest in the world ”despite the fact that the percentage of overall health spending undertaken by our government was second-lowest in the OECD, at 45.4 percent. In other words, we spent more on government care for the elderly and the poor than most normal governments spend on health care for everyone.  Why is this so? It is, as I discussed in the latest issue of National Affairs, because our health-care system is neither socialized nor free, but the worst of both.” Roy expects the U.S. to get ”within reach of first-place under the new health law.

Last night, Bill O’Reilly asserted that no one on Fox News ever said that people could be jailed for not getting health insurance or paying a fine under the new health law. Time’s Kate Pickert goes through some Fox News transcripts and finds a number of occasions that they did. Pickert says, “All of these statements were made after the Senate Finance Committee passed its version of the health reform legislation, which specifically prohibited imprisoning people for refusing to pay the tax penalty levied on those without insurance. To be fair, the House bill did not specifically prohibit this, but it also did not include this threat. Critics who said failure to obtain insurance would result in jail time were quoting a piece of the internal revenue code, not any version of health reform legislation.”

Wonk Room’s Igor Volksy looks at reports of increasing health insurer CEO pay and says, “To be clear, insurers aren’t wrong to argue that health care spending increases premiums. They are wrong, however, in pretending that they are doing all they can to contain health care spending and that they’re taken unprecedented steps to lower their administrative costs and overhead.”

John Goodman argues that “the four worst features of the legislation have been almost totally ignored — by Republicans in Congress, by the national news media and even by serious economists.”  Among these features, he lists: “A bizarre system of subsidies will disrupt the entire labor market — causing massive layoffs and, ultimately, a complete restructuring of industrial organization.”

David Harlow hosts the latest edition of the Health Wonk Review, a biwkeely compendium of health policy blogging, using a theme chock full of metaphors and puns.

And the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities has launched a new blog Off The Charts that will track implementation of the new health law, along with several other budgetary and economic issues.

Bloggers argue about potential effects of the provisions in the health overhaul that go into effect soon, a doctor and a critic find common ground on physician pay, one Democratic lawmaker labels state efforts to challenge the law “appropriate”, and a new health blogger debuts.

The National Journal’s Marilyn Werber Serafini queries her experts on whether they think they early changes in the health law will be “helpful or harmful?”  John Goodman, David Kendall and Bruce Lesley respond.

At least one blogger found that Congress may find the new law more “harmful” than it originally expected, based on a New York Times story that suggests details were not included to guarantee a stable transition for lawmakers  to purchase insurance from new exchanges that have yet to be formed, rather than the through the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program. Hot Air’s Allah Pundit reacts: ”Turns out that fantastically long, mind-bogglingly complex bills which no one has actually read may create unintended consequences. Remember how they forgot to require insurers to cover kids with preexisting conditions? Oh, and they forgot initially to let young adults be covered by their parents’ insurance until Reid fixed it in reconciliation. Now this. Who knew that when Pelosi said they’d have to pass the bill so that people could find out what’s in it, ‘people’ meant Congress.”

The Altarum Institute Blog posts commentary from American Medical Association J. James Rohack on the new health law.  Rohack writes: “While the new law is not perfect and more still needs to be done, this sweeping reform package will greatly benefit America’s patients and their physicians. … The new health reform law includes significant improvements, but there are still some important measures that need to be addressed. Congress still has not acted to permanently repeal the broken Medicare physician payment formula that threatens steep cuts to physicians for the care of seniors and military families.”

Echoing some of Rohacks’ concerns, Heritage’s Kathryn Nix explores the lack of a new physician payment scheme in the health overhaul as part of the blog series ”Side Effects of ObamaCare.” Nix writes, “Rather than create new entitlement programs and expand old ones, Congress would have done better to try to fix the numerous problems in existing programs and cut federal spending.  True reform would have made systemic changes to Medicare and Medicaid that would make them financially viable.  Instead, the programs’ fiscal woes will only get far worse. ”

Mother Jones’ Suzy Khimm reports that while Democratic leaders have scoffed at some states’ efforts to challenge the health bill in court,”some vulnerable Dems who supported health care reform can’t afford to be so scathing [in their criticism of health care lawsuits]. Take Rep. Tom Perriello (D-Va.), who describes these legal efforts as ‘an appropriate gesture,’ even while maintaining his own support for the health care law.”

The New Republic’s Jonathan Chait looks at a totally different repeal effort: a 1936 campaign to repeal Social Security, where Republican presidential candidate Alf Landon, who had ”declared that Social Security was ‘unjust, unworkable, stupidly drafted, and wastefully financed,’ upped the stakes still further by insisting the federal government had no way of keeping track of Social Security recipients.  ‘Are their photographs going to be kept on file in a Washington office?  Or are they going to have identification tags put around their necks?’ he asked.” Chait reacts: “Whatever plans the Republican Party has to repeal the Affordable Care Act, it’s hard to imagine they’ll come up with a response as strong as [that].”

On the flip side of the issue, The New America Foundation posts the webcast of a forum it held about implementation of the new health law.

And there’s a new health blogger on the block: Katherine Hobson started today at the Wall Street Journal’s Health Blog. Hobson was formerly a health reporter for U.S. News & World Report.

 Bloggers are estimating whether it’s worth keep health insurance under the new law, what’s happening with the design of health insurance plans and a key health policy blogger announces his last post.

Political Calculations, while hosting the blog carnival known as “Calvacade of Risk,” made a tool to estimate whether dropping insurance coverage actually make sense for healthy individuals under the new health law.  According to the authors, they found: “Playing with the numbers in our tool, what we find is that the less likely an individual will need medical care, the more it is to their advantage to drop their current health care coverage and become uninsured, buying it only if it becomes necessary, then to drop it again once its not needed.”

On a similar note, Insure Blog’s Henry Stern predicts: “Mini-med (aka “limited benefit” plans) will become “supplements” (much like MediGap plans) for folks sophisticated enough to use them that way. … Only suckers and those eligible for subsidies will buy the exorbitantly priced health insurance plans that will become the norm under ObamaCare©. Thoughtful people will do the math, concluding that paying the non-compliance tax is much cheaper than paying premiums.”

Critical Condition’s Avik S. A. Roy says that in place of the current legislation, Republicans should encourage the adoption of  ”consumer-driven health care. CDHC, as regular readers of this blog are well aware, consists of health plans in which consumers buy insurance for catastrophic health events, but pay routine expenses directly using tax-free health savings accounts.” Roy looks at a new study from Aetna of participants’ behavior in consumer-driven plans versus preferred provider organization plans, but bemoans that under the new health law CDHC plans are ”at risk of being curtailed, if not asphyxiated.”

In another installment of Heritage’s “Side Effects of ObamaCare,” Richard Sherwood argues that primary care shortages will get worse under the new law: “Call it a double-edged sword on physician supply.  It creates demand for more physicians as it encourages doctors to leave the profession entirely.  Under Obamacare, physician workload is expected to increase, even as federal health programs cut reimbursement rates for the docs.  ‘Work more for less’ is not a slogan calculated to attract more workers to the field or improve the quality of care.”

The Washington Post’s Ezra Klein disagrees with some conservative commentators’ assertions that the new health care law appears to reduce the deficit more than it does in reality because the government doesn’t have to pay out new benefits until 2014, even though it collects revenue starting in 2010. Klein says: “Republicans now believe that saving money in order to offset the cost of purchasing something is some sort of trick, where it used to just be responsible budgeting. But in any case, it’s not true, as you can see in this graph that CBO just released” (below).

The New Health Dialogue’s Joanne Kenen reports that former directors of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services–appointed by Republican presidents–are praising Don Berwick, rumored to be President Barack Obama’s pick to run the agency. Kenen says, “Why is this important? Because both Scully and McClellan headed CMS under Republican administrations. And while political affiliation of Medicare directors may not be relevant in a perfect world, this is not a perfect world. This is Washington — and Berwick, we have been told, is likely to face a Senate confirmation fight. He needs at least one Republican to back him, and while we suspect that will happen in time, we would prefer sooner rather than later. Wonder what the chances of him getting some love from his home-state senator. No, it’s not John Kerry we’re wondering about. It’s the other one — Scott Brown.”

And, to the disappointment of many health policy blog readers, the New Republic’s Jonathan Cohn announced today that he is retiring his health policy blog, The Treatment.  Cohn writes, “TNR created this blog to cover the debate over whether to pass comprehensive health care reform. That debate has ended. Now it is time for this blog to do the same. … Of course, the story of health care reform isn’t over. In a sense, it’s just beginning. Implementing the new law will involve its own, very different set of challenges. But just as this isn’t the end of my life as a health care reporter, so this isn’t the end of my life as a TNR blogger. To my surprise, I found I actually liked blogging. I even started a Twitter feed, although I’ve had trouble convincing Noam to do the same. I’m not giving up either endeavor.”

Even though its been nearly three weeks since Congress approved the health overhaul legislation, its effects continue to be chewed over by bloggers.

Wonk Room’s Igor Volsky,picking up on a Wall Street Journal report, says: “Lawmakers in at least four states — including Tennessee, Oklahoma, Missouri and Mississippi — have all introduced bills ‘that would generally block abortion coverage in exchange plans.” He adds, “Two other states — Arizona and Kansas — are seeking to impose wider restrictions. Arizona has a bill that would blog local governments from providing abortion coverage for their employees and Kansas would ‘prohibit insurance plans from generally covering abortion.’”

Heritage’s Kathryn Nix checks out a Web site set up by HHS to describe the new health law and declares: “The lack of precise and adequate information only reinforces the underlying problems with this massive overhaul and should give Americans more reasons to want [the new law] repealed.”

The Washington Post’s Ezra Klein looks at a study of physicians with financial stakes in surgery centers and says, “I’m not saying doctors cackle maniacally when scheduling people for unnecessary surgeries. But the evidence suggests that when doctors have a financial stake in seeing more surgeries conducted, they start seeing the need for their patients to undergo more surgical treatments. And that drives costs up for everyone.”

Critical Condition’s John R. Graham describes a lunch in San Francisco with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and bemoans one aspect of the new health law in which health plans “must enroll beneficiaries’ ‘children’ up to age 26.” He complains that the provision doesn’t require these young adults to maintain coverage: “Perhaps a little concerned that even her San Francisco audience might understand this bad incentive, Mrs. Pelosi said that “children” could only take advantage of this “benefit” if their parents agreed. Perhaps this is to compensate for the obvious incoherence of a law that compels a parent to provide coverage to a ”child” many years after a parent is free to expel his offspring from the family home and otherwise cease paying his living expenses.”

The New Health Dialogue’s Joanne Kenen explains her recent article on a “disclose and apology” for medical malpractice reform. Kenen says, “The hospitals that are succeeding with this model have had to change their culture in myriad ways. They need to make sure that everyone from the executive suite to the greenest intern or lowest-paid aide know it is safe — not just safe but welcome and essential — to report errors, near errors, and potential errors.”

AHCJ’s Andrew Van Dam looks at conflict-of-interest accusations levied at economist Uwe Reinhardt and his response.

The Incidental Economist’s Austin Frakt thinks the new release of Medicare claims data may not be so great after all because  ”Of course they will be thoroughly stripped of all identifiers including, I am sure, geographic identifiers below the state or region level. That’s necessary for public release but renders the data not terribly useful for most research. (Researchers can obtain identifiable Medicare claims data with approval and after institutional review board scrutiny.)”

And after news of an uptick in threats following passage of the health care law, TPM Muckraker updated their interactive map describing the incidents.