OVERNIGHT HEALTH: GOP will get contraception vote

Voters divided: New polling from the Pew Research Center says the public is almost evenly divided over whether religious institutions should have to cover birth control. According to the poll, 48 percent of voters believe religious institutions should be exempt from a requirement to cover contraception for their employees, while 44 percent believe they should have to play by the same rules.

The survey, however, took place before the White House announced its new policy and does not say whether respondents believe the changes qualify as an exemption for religious institutions.

{mosads}Transparency, schmansparency: The American Action Forum, led by former Congressional Budget Office Director Douglas Holtz-Eakin, is out with a new analysis that accuses the White House of abusing its power while implementing healthcare reforms. The paper criticizes the administration for using interim final rules to implement certain provisions, as well as for its informal “bulletin” on essential health benefits. The process “hides the unworkable policies and true cost of the healthcare law,” the analysis says. You can read it here.

The think tank also has a summary of the Department of Health and Human Services’s policy on essential benefits — in short, leaving them up to the states — and the potential pitfalls to that approach.

Budget feedback: Reactions to the president’s budget continued to roll in Tuesday. Here are a few samples: 

• The Campaign to End Obesity Action Fund, a key partner of first lady Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move!” initiative, blasted the budget’s $4 billion cut to the healthcare law’s Prevention and Public Health Fund.

“The President must know that there is little good news about obesity — the epidemic continues, and with it the long term costs to our nation increase,” action fund co-founder Stephanie Silverman said in a statement. “The First Lady has done exemplary work highlighting some of the successes of prevention efforts, but obesity remains one of the country’s costliest medical conditions. We respectfully urge the President to reconsider his recommendation, which would undermine vital obesity prevention and reversal initiatives already in place around the country.”

• The senior’s lobby AARP raised concerns with the budget’s $364 billion in Medicare and Medicaid savings over 10 years, part of which would come from having wealthier seniors pay a greater portion of their Medicare costs.

“AARP urges the President and Congress to first address high system-wide health care costs — which drive increases in Medicare and Medicaid — by improving the health care delivery system,” AARP CEO Barry Rand said in a statement. “We must first focus on reducing waste, fraud, and inefficiency — rather than reducing the benefits Americans have earned after decades of working hard and paying into the system.”

• And The Center for Regulatory Effectiveness dislikes the budget’s Medicaid reimbursement cuts for home oxygen and other durable medical equipment through the healthcare law’s expansion of the competitive bidding program.

Wednesday’s agenda

HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius will defend her agency’s $76.4 billion budget request before the Senate Finance Committee in the morning. We expect Republicans will have a field day asking her about the budget’s $864 million investment in the healthcare reform law’s health insurance exchanges; its 17 percent hike in the Food and Drug Administration budget, to $4.5 billion — almost half of which would come from new user fees; and its $364 billion in proposed cuts to Medicare and Medicaid.

Here’s our story on the healthcare reform funding from yesterday.

The Energy and Commerce Health subcommittee holds the last in a series of three hearings on user fees for medical products. This one focuses on reauthorization of the Medical Device User Fee Act, which expires Sept. 30. Here’s the hearing memo.

The House Judiciary Committee delves into President Obama’s recess appointments during a 10 a.m. hearing. One of the most controversial was Donald Berwick’s July 2010 appointment to head the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which was never vetted by the Senate Finance Committee.

Sebelius joins acting Medicare agency administrator Marilyn Tavenner and Rick Kronick, deputy assistant secretary for health policy at HHS, for a healthcare reform law announcement in the afternoon.

And the American Medical Association wraps up its 2012 national advocacy conference. Here’s the agenda.

State by state

Illinois will start combing Medicaid records for fraud this week without federal approval after waiting a year for the Obama administration to give its go-ahead.

Maine wants to add its smallest businesses to its high-risk pool.

The Virginia legislature cleared a breast-density bill.

Revolving door

Andrew von Eschenbach, the commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration from 2005 to 2009 and a former director of the National Cancer Institute, is joining the Manhattan Institute to chair its Project FDA initiative. Von Eschenbach laid out his vision for the FDA in a Wall Street Journal opinion piece on Tuesday.

Reading list

The healthcare debate in Massachusetts is turning increasingly to costs, NPR reports.

Kaiser Health News looks at how Medicare tracks hospitals’ patient-safety records.

The healthcare law’s high-risk insurance pools don’t have as many enrollees as expected, Politico reports.

What you might have missed on Healthwatch

GOP senators link support for payroll tax cut package to looser bounds on physician-owned hospitals

Obama administration claims record $4.1 billion in Medicare fraud savings

House Dems call on health agencies to enforce drug-trial reporting laws

Medicare could delay burdensome rules on doctors

Comments / complaints / suggestions? Please let us know:

Julian Pecquet: jpecquet@digital-staging.thehill.com / 202-628-8527

Sam Baker: sbaker@digital-staging.thehill.com / 202-628-8351

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