Obama Was Pushed by Drug Industry, E-Mails Suggest
By PETER BAKER
WASHINGTON — After weeks of talks, drug industry lobbyists were growing nervous. To cut a deal with the White House on overhauling health care, they needed to be sure that President Obamawould stop a proposal intended to bring down medicine prices.
On June 3, 2009, one of the lobbyists e-mailed Nancy-Ann DeParle, the president’s health care adviser. Ms. DeParle reassured the lobbyist. Although Mr. Obama was overseas, she wrote, she and other top officials had “made decision, based on how constructive you guys have been, to oppose importation” on a different proposal.
Just like that, Mr. Obama’s staff signaled a willingness to put aside support for the reimportation of prescription medicines at lower prices and by doing so solidified a compact with an industry the president had vilified on the campaign trail. Central to Mr. Obama’s drive to remake the nation’s health care system was an unlikely collaboration with the pharmaceutical industry that forced unappealing trade-offs.
The e-mail exchange three years ago was among a cache of messages obtained from the industry and released in recent weeks by House Republicans — including a new batch put out Friday detailing the industry’s advertising campaign supporting Mr. Obama’s health care overhaul. The broad contours of his dealings with the industry were known in 2009, but the newly public e-mails open a window into the compromises underlying a health care law now awaiting the judgment of the Supreme Court.
How Do You Put a Nation on a Diet?
The Walt Disney Company last week announced plans to restrict junk food commercials on its television programs aimed at children. A few days before, Mayor Michael Bloomberg took steps to restrict the sale of supersized sugary drinks in New York. But isolated changes may not make a substantial difference at a time when Americans are gaining weight as a nation. Reducing obesity will require a broader shift in the culture.
For decades, people have treated obesity as a personal failure. They blame individuals and families for eating junk food and choosing television over exercise. But experts in this country and other industrialized nations have increasingly recognized that obesity is caused mostly by social and environmental factors that limit people’s ability to eat healthy foods and get enough exercise. Our modern society, with its enormous and diverse food supply and its host of labor-saving technologies, stacks the deck against them.
The consensus of experts, in a report issued in May by the Institute of Medicine, is that only a nationwide, prevention-oriented approach will work. It won’t be easy, but it needs to be done as costs linked to obesity soar ever higher. A responsible estimate cited by the institute indicates that the annual expense of treating obesity-related illness, like Type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease and cancer, and the added cost of treating almost any medical condition when the patient is obese, has already reached $190 billion.
Health Care After the Supreme Court Ruling
By PAM BELLUCK
LATER this month, the Supreme Court will rule on the Obama administration’s health care law, the Affordable Care Act, deciding whether to uphold or strike down the entire law, or to keep some provisions.
No matter the decision, the political ramifications in this election year will be big. After all, the presidential contenders are President Obama, the top-ranking promoter of the law, and Mitt Romney, the architect of a 2006 health care overhaul in Massachusetts that was, in pivotal ways, the model for the national law.
But experts on health care policy say the practical effect of the court’s decision will probably be less earth-shattering than some people think. If the court takes what many observers believe will be the most likely route and strikes down the individual mandate — the requirement that virtually everyone purchase insurance — many more currently uninsured people are still likely to receive health coverage, they say.
Even if the law is struck down entirely — which could happen if the court decides that the other provisions are too intertwined with the mandate — many experts say that some changes the law has already set in motion will continue, probably more slowly, but possibly at a more urgent pace in reaction to the elimination of the federal law.
6.6 million young adults on parents' health plans, survey says
The number, topping earlier estimates, shows the popularity of a provision of President Obama's healthcare law requiring health insurers to let parents enroll children under 26 on their plans.
By Noam Levey, Washington Bureau5:05 AM PDT, June 8, 2012
WASHINGTON — President Obama's healthcare law helped as many as 6.6 million young adults stay on or get on their parents' health plans in the first year and a half after the law was signed, a new survey indicates.
That number, found in the survey by the nonprofit Commonwealth Fund, is far higher than earlier estimates. And at a time when public wariness about the Affordable Care Act remains high, it underscores the popularity of a provision that requires insurers to allow parents to enroll their children up to age 26 on their own plans.
Earlier surveys by the federal government found that the number of people ages 19 to 25 without insurance declined after the law was signed, reversing years of erosion in health coverage for young adults.
But, although the government research indicated that 2.5 million more young adults had health insurance in 2011 than in 2010, it was unclear how many people were benefiting from the law.
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-0608-young-adult-insurance-20120608,0,6431876,print.story
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