HCR Update from Mark Sanna: Medicare will soon track spending on millions of individual beneficiaries, reward hospitals that hold down costs and penalize those whose patients prove most expensive. Hospitals could be held accountable not only for the cost of the care they provide, but also for the cost of services performed by doctors and other health care providers in the 90 days after a Medicare patient leaves the hospital.

HCR Update from Mark Sanna: Researchers reported in JAMA this week that no improvement in health outcomes was measured in Medicare beneficiaries residing in areas with the highest level of adult primary care physicians per population.

HCR Update from Mark Sanna: Democratic leaders are terming this week's Senate vote on the House-passed Ryan budget, including its proposal to revamp Medicare, a "defining issue." Meanwhile, some Republican senators have announced that they won't back the plan.

HCR Update from Mark Sanna: Most Americans say they don't believe Medicare has to be cut to balance the federal budget, and ditto for Social Security, a new poll shows. The Associated Press-GfK poll suggests that arguments for overhauling the massive benefit programs to pare government debt have failed to sway the public

HCR Update from Mark Sanna: Despite all of the bashing by conservative commentators and politicians — and the predictions of doom for national health care reform — the program Mitt Romney signed into law as governor has been a success. The real lesson from Massachusetts is that health care reform can work, and the national law should work as well or even better.

HCR Update from Mark Sanna: Despite opposition from insurers, the Department of Health and Human Services finalized a rule stipulating that health insurance premium increases greater than 10 percent will trigger extra regulatory scrutiny.

HCR Update from Mark Sanna: Seizing on a political opportunity, the Senate's top Democrat, Harry Reid, told USA TODAY on Wednesday that he will schedule a vote next week in an effort to tie Senate Republicans to a House GOP plan to dramatically revamp the popular Medicare health care program.

HCR Update from Mark Sanna: A study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association reports that the number of emergency departments has been declining for the past two decades. Hospital ERs, particularly those serving the urban poor, are closing at an alarming rate even as emergency visits are rising,

HCR Update from Mark Sanna: Medicare will start running out of money in 2024 – 5 years earlier than projected last year — as a result of the sluggish economic recovery, the program’s trustees reported today. The outlook for the federal health insurance program that covers 47.5 million elderly and disabled Americans is a dramatic shift from last summer. That's when the trustees proudly projected that the new health law had extended the solvency of the program by 12 years from 2017 to 2029.

HCR Update from Mark Sanna: By their comments and questions Tuesday, the judges signaled they were likely to uphold provisions in the law that require virtually all Americans to have health insurance by 2014 or pay a penalty.

HCR Update from Mark Sanna: Tuesday's arguments were the first among the thirty health law legal challenges to reach the federal appeals court level. Almost everyone agrees the cases will eventually go to the Supreme Court.

HCR Update from Mark Sanna: President Obama's health care law faces a series of challenges in three appeals courts starting Tuesday as Republican lawyers from 27 states will urge the courts to strike down the law as unconstitutional. In a sign of the high stakes and the partisan divide, one case will feature a rare courtroom clash between the Obama administration's top appellate lawyer and his counterpart from the George W. Bush administration.

HCR Update from Mark Sanna: A five-week flurry of federal appellate hearings on the constitutionality of the Obama health care law kicks off Tuesday in Richmond, Va., beginning the second round of a race to the Supreme Court among a multitude of litigants eager to strike down the president’s signature domestic achievement.

HCR Update from Mark Sanna: House Republicans signaled Thursday that they were backing away from the centerpiece of their budget plan — a proposal to overhaul Medicare — in a decision that underscored both the difficulties and political perils of addressing the nation’s long-term fiscal problems.

HCR Update from Mark Sanna: More than two dozen states challenging the health care overhaul urged a U.S. appeals court on Wednesday to strike down the Obama administration's landmark law, arguing it far exceeds the federal government's powers. The motion, filed on behalf of 26 states, urges the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta to uphold a Florida federal judge's ruling that the overhaul's core requirement is unconstitutional.

HCR Update from Mark Sanna: Medicare changes in the deficit reduction plan championed by House Budget Committee Chairman Paul D. Ryan, R-Wis., will be a bigger issue in the 2012 election campaign than the health care overhaul law, Republican pollster William McInturff predicted in an appearance Tuesday. That’s a big plus for Democrats McInturff said — but he nevertheless predicted that the GOP would retain control of the House and said the party may gain narrow control of the Senate.

HCR Update from Mark Sanna: House Republicans say their budget proposal would make Medicare work just like the health insurance that covers federal employees, including members of Congress. But a close examination shows the two plans are very different. Under the federal employees’ health plan, the government pays a fixed share of premiums. No such guarantee exists under the Republicans’ plan.

HCR Update from Mark Sanna: There's a chance that the Supreme Court could rule the so-called "individual mandate" in the healthcare reform law unconstitutional, but on the whole the bill will stay intact, former President Bill Clinton said. "Well, I think that they would strike down the mandatory purchase. I mean you can make people buy automobile liability insurance," Clinton said in an interview taped Friday.