Health highlights today

On healthcare reform, senior Finance Committee aides Liz Fowler (D) and Chuck Clapton (R) will be featured Tuesday at a late policy breakfast hosted by the CQ-Roll Call folks.

Also related to health reform, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) issued some bad news for the Democrats Monday, finding that high-risk insurance pools — designed to cover sicker Americans until insurance exchanges launch in 2014 — will cost up to three times more than the $5 billion that the Democrats’ reform law allocated for them. If more money isn’t pumped into the program, CBO Director Doug Elmendorf warned in a letter to Sen. Mike Enzi (Wyo.), senior Republican on the Senate health committee, hundreds of thousands of patients could go without care in 2012 and 2013.

Republicans are already pointing to the CBO analysis to accuse Democrats of making false promises during the healthcare reform debate.