Reform Rodeo

Photo by David Monniaux
1. Big Pharma: The pharmaceutical industry is threatening to reverse their support of the health care reform legislation if the bill calls for a reduction in the number of years that a company’s biologics are protected from generics.
2. The Caddy Conundrum: NPR reports that organized labor appears to be on board with taxing Cadillac plans, with some movement in their favor regarding the thresholds triggering the tax.
3. Health Insurance Exchanges: The Commonwealth Fund and the Alliance for health reform moderated a discussion on health insurance exchanges. Fantastic materials that outline the House and Senate plans can be found at the bottom of this page, which includes the extraordinary paper which Professor Timothy Jost presented.
4. Health Reform Discussions: The Health Care Blog has rounded up many of the discussions on health care reform.
5. Play-or-Pay Problems: The NEJM has a thorough analysis of the “play-or-pay” provisions in health reform legislation, and the problems that may arise.
6. Multimedia: Atul Gawande chats with Charlie Rose on January 5th about health care, as well as Gawande’s new book “Checklist Manifesto”.



Posts from Health Reform Watch have been cited by media sources throughout the country, including The New York Times, Washington Post, L.A. Times, Kaiser Health News, The Health Care Blog, NPR's Planet Money Blog, Duke Univ. Med. Center News, American Health Line Alerts, BusinessWeek.com, Concurring Opinions, Balkinization, The New England Journal of Medicine, Harvard's Nieman Foundation for Journalism, Las Vegas Sun, Maggie Mahar, Ezra Klein, Tom Geoghegan, and the official homepage of the Office of the Democratic Majority Leader of the House of Representatives, Steny Hoyer.