HCR Update from Mark Sanna: It's become a symbol of sorts for the federal government's budget dysfunction: Unless Congress acts before Jan. 1, doctors will again face steep Medicare cuts that threaten to undermine health care for millions of seniors and disabled people. This time it's a 27.4% cut.

HCR Update from Mark Sanna: A report published today shows that the United States spent about $7,960 per person on health care in 2009 – about 2.5 times the average of the countries studied. It also found that health spending in the U.S. has increased faster than in all other high-income countries since 1970, even accounting for population growth.

HCR Update from Mark Sanna: The failure of the congressional super committee could mean automatic budget cuts totaling billions of dollars for everything from Medicare to biomedical research, starting in 2013.

HCR Update from Mark Sanna: A dispute has erupted between President Obama and Democrats in Congress over a proposal to broaden the exemption from new rules that require health insurance plans to cover contraceptives for women free of charge. The White House is considering a change that would grant a broad exemption to health plans sponsored by employers who object to such coverage for moral and religious reasons.

HCR Update from Mark Sanna: Despite serving as the "foundational element" of the U.S. healthcare system, the nation's primary-care network is experiencing "diminishing economic margins, and increasing workforce attrition compounded by diminishing recruitment of new physicians, nurses and physician assistants into primary care," according to the U.S. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.

HCR Update from Mark Sanna: A state-by-state analysis finds that from 2003 to 2010, premiums for family coverage increased an average of 50%. At that rate, the average family premium would balloon to nearly $24,000 by 2020, according to the study, which was conducted by The Commonwealth Fund, a nonprofit health policy foundation.

HCR Update from Mark Sanna: More and more employers are demanding that workers who smoke, are overweight or have high cholesterol shoulder a greater share of their health care costs, a shift toward penalizing employees with unhealthy lifestyles rather than rewarding good habits. Policies that impose financial penalties on employees have doubled in the last two years to 19% of 248 major American employers recently surveyed.

HCR Update from Mark Sanna: With the high court's announcement Monday that it would decide on the constitutionality of the individual mandate in the Affordable Care Act, we are assured of a decision coming smack dab in the middle of the 2012 general election campaign.

HCR Update from Mark Sanna: At 10 a.m. today, the Supreme Court issued its orders for the upcoming 2012 term, which includes the details of how the oral arguments related to the health law will shape up.

HCR Update from Mark Sanna: This week conservative legal activists renewed their calls for Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan to abstain from cases involving President Obama's healthcare law. Conservatives say Kagan should recuse herself from suits over the law's individual mandate because the administration began planning its defense while she was solicitor general.

HCR Update from Mark Sanna: Poorly designed, hard-to-use computerized health records are a threat to patient safety, and an independent agency should be set up to investigate injuries and deaths linked to health information technology, according to a federal study released Tuesday. The report by the Institute of Medicine comes as the government is spending billions of dollars in incentive payments to encourage doctors and hospitals to adopt electronic health records. 

HCR Update from Mark Sanna: A federal appeals court in Washington upheld the Obama administration’s health care law on Tuesday in a decision written by a prominent conservative jurist. The decision came as the Supreme Court is about to consider whether to take up challenges to the Affordable Care Act, a milestone legislative initiative of the administration. Of four appellate court rulings on the health care law so far, this is the third to deal with the law on the merits, and the second that upholds it.

HCR Update from Mark Sanna: Most Americans also think the overall health of the public isn't improving, according to a new poll commissioned by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The poll found that 45% of people thought the health of Americans had become worse during the past five years, and 40% thought it had stayed about the same. Only 13% thought it was better.

HCR Update from Mark Sanna: As the super committee struggles to meet its Thanksgiving deadline. Republicans have been steadfast in their refusal to raise taxes, and Democrats are only willing to engage in cuts to Medicare and other entitlement programs if new revenues are part of the mix. Meanwhile, health care providers, worried about Medicaid cuts and other programs, have taken out big ads around Washington to make their case.

HCR Update from Mark Sanna: If the Supreme Court next year gets rid of the health reform law's requirement to buy insurance, Republicans could gain momentum to get rid of the rest of the law — and President Barack Obama would suffer a huge embarrassment at the height of an election year. But Democrats and supporters of the law also see a silver lining: If the least popular part of the law goes away, they think what's left could become stronger and more popular with the public.

HCR Update from Mark Sanna: A $5 billion fund created as part of the health care overhaul to pay for health insurance for early retirees will run out of money by September 2012, according to a federal report released Monday. Around 6,000 employers are currently getting subsidies through the program to help pay for benefits for retired workers between the ages of 55 and 64.