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Amendments to Defund Affordable Care Act in House-Passed Continuing Resolution   The U.S. House of Representatives spent four days last week debating HR1, a continuing resolution ... this year. The bill cuts federal funding by almost $100 billion, and includes a five percent cut of $1.6 billion to the National Institutes of Health budget. More than 500 amendments were offered to the bill to make even deeper cuts to numerous federal programs. The bill was also used to ... to the CR passed that would greatly complicate the law’s implementation, including the development of regulations that will govern the health benefit exchanges and determining the essential benefits package. Amendments also passed that would deny funding to enforce the new medical ...

For millions of cancer patients and their families, palliative care can play an essential role in improving their quality of life throughout treatment and survivorship. Yet, many Americans remain unaware about ... research focused on palliative care and symptom management and improve palliative care training for nurses, doctors, social workers, and other health care professionals. It would also establish a national palliative care public awareness campaign to educate patients and providers about the availability and benefits of palliative care.    Palliative care can transform the way health care providers treat cancer patients and others with serious illnesses by improving their quality of care, while also saving health care ...

... broker and agent commissions should be included in the MLR calculation so that it accurately reflects the proportion of spending by insurers on health care as opposed to administrative expenses. Removing commissions from the calculation would violate the intent of the ACA and render the MLR ... table the MLR issue for the time being, but the NAIC could raise it again, possibly in the next few weeks.   In other news, the Department of Health and Human Services "listening tour" on what should constitute "essential health benefits" that health plans sold in the new exchanges must ...

In the States   As we previously noted in this space, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has tasked each state with defining an essential health benefits (EHB) package that will cover 10 broad categories defined in a December 16, 2011 HHS bulletin. In combination with this task, ... A new Commonwealth Fund report on gaps in health insurance shows that segments of target audiences for two popular provisions of the Affordable Care Act are unaware of its benefits. Overall the majority of Americans know about the provision allowing individuals under 26 to stay on their ...