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Tracking the latest developments on health care

• Earlybird, Feb. 9

  Subscribers can read all of Earlybird each weekday.

  • "When Republicans take President Obama up on his invitation to hash out their differences over health care this month, they will carry with them a fairly well-developed set of ideas intended to make health insurance more widely available and affordable, by emphasizing tax incentives and state innovations, with no new federal mandates and only a modest expansion of the federal safety net," the New York Times reports.

  • "Few congressional Democrats said Monday they are confident that President Obama's plans for televised talks with House and Senate leaders of both parties on Feb. 25 will jump-start healthcare negotiations," CongressDailyAM (subscription) reports.

  • "Anthem Blue Cross of California, the state's largest for-profit health insurer, announced Monday it will increase premiums for its 800,000 customers by as much as 39 percent, drawing an immediate rebuke from" Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, CongressDailyAM (subscription) reports.

  • "Democrats in Congress are holding White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel accountable for his part in the collapse of healthcare reform," The Hill reports.

  • "State lawmakers in at least three dozen states are pushing ahead with a series of measures aimed at pre-empting whatever" version of health care reform "might come out of Washington," Politico reports.

  National Journal Online | February 09, 2010 | 8:45 am

• Health Spending Makes Biggest Jump In 50 Years

  U.S. health care spending in 2009 grew to 17.3 percent of GDP, marking the single largest annual increase in at least 50 years, according to government projections released today and reported in the journal Health Affairs. Spending could consume 19.3 percent of GDP by 2019, the report finds. Total U.S. health care spending is estimated to have been $2.5 trillion in 2009, up 5.7 percent from the year before.

  The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services' Office of the Actuary released the data and wrote the report for Health Affairs. Their findings do not account for any changes that health care reform legislation now under consideration might achieve.

  The economic recession has affected both public and private health care spending as more people have lost their private insurance and government has been hit with increases in Medicaid enrollment and therefore spending. But while public spending grew 8.7 percent from 2008 to 2009, private spending grew by a smaller 3 percent.

  Looking forward, health spending is projected to annually outpace growth in the GDP by about 1.7 percent. Through 2019, public spending is expected to grow at an average of 7 percent a year, and private spending at a lower 5.2 percent.

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  Marilyn Werber Serafini | February 04, 2010 | 8:10 am

• Experts: Fixing Economy Means Fixing Health Care

  Although President Obama is refocusing his efforts on the economy, little progress is possible without also addressing the nation's health care problems, top figures in the debate are arguing this week on NationalJournal.com's Health Care Expert Blog.

  Many of the experts applauded the temporary help Obama recommended for individuals and states in his fiscal 2011 budget proposal this week, but they also argued the strong connection between health care and the economy and said that now is the time for action on reform.

  Extra government spending on health care would increase the purchase of goods and services and create jobs, wrote Uwe Reinhardt, economics professor at Princeton University. It would increase GDP in the short run where tax cuts wouldn't, he wrote. "So this is the dilemma the Administration faces at this time: should it be focused on (a) the short run mainly or (b) the long run shape of the economy?... Unfortunately Republicans, who once claimed the mantle of fiscal probity, have lost the moral platform from which to preach on the subject. The public debt held tripled under President Reagan, almost doubled again under President Bush the Elder, and then doubled again under President Bush the Younger. Not exactly a record of fiscal conservatism!"

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  Economy Experts | February 03, 2010 | 12:52 pm

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