HCR Update from Mark Sanna: Federal agents on Tuesday arrested a Dallas-area doctor accused of bilking Medicare of $350 million over a five-year period, in what the government called the largest Medicare fraud scheme by dollar value linked to a single physician. According to documents filed by the Justice Department in Dallas federal court, 54-year-old Dr. Jacques Roy carried out the fraud with the help of his office manager and home health-care agencies.

HCR Update from Mark Sanna: Politico reports on new polling that shows the federal health law draws more negative public opinions than does the Massachusetts law signed by Mitt Romney when he was the state's governor. Also, the LA Times reports that a majority of registered voters believe the health law's individual mandate is unconstitutional.

HCR Update from Mark Sanna: Florida, Michigan, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Texas joined with Catholic organizations and two Catholics to fight the new rules issued earlier this month requiring healthcare coverage for free birth control.

HCR Update from Mark Sanna: Next month's challenge to the Obama-sponsored health care law could affect the care available to most Americans, alter the balance of power between Washington and the states and remain a flash point through this presidential campaign.

HCR Update from Mark Sanna: Congress quickly passed a deal to extend the payroll-tax-cut through year-end, continue unemployment benefits and avoid a steep cut in Medicare doctors' fees, moving on from a fight that tied up legislators for months. By 293-132, the House voted to pass the measure. The Senate quickly followed with a 60-36 vote.

HCR Update from Mark Sanna: The good news for the nation's doctors — and the millions of Medicare patients they care for — is that assuming everything goes as planned, the 27.4 percent cut in reimbursements that would have taken effect March 1 won't. The bad news? The fix included in the deal to extend the payroll tax holiday isn't permanent. It only extends to the end of the year.

HCR Update from Mark Sanna:After wrangling for weeks over how to finance a Medicare 'doc fix,' House and Senate conferees have a plan. The proposal would cut  Medicare payments to hospitals and other providers for 'bad debt,' Medicare payments to clinical laboratories and Medicaid 'disproportionate share' payments to hospitals that serve many poor patients,  and divert $5 billion  from the health law’s $15 billion prevention fund.

HCR Update from Mark Sanna: The deal that would protect doctors from a huge cut in Medicare reimbursement fees proposed by Congress would do so through cuts in the new prevention and public health fund established in the health care law, combined with reducing help for hospitals with bad debt and other health-care-related spending trims.

HCR Update from Mark Sanna: The president's new budget projects that Medicare spending will double over the coming decade from $478 billion this year to almost $1 trillion in 2022. Medicaid, the government health care program for the poor and disabled, would more than double from $255 billion this year to $589 billion by 2022.

HCR Update from Mark Sanna: Starting this fall, insurers and employers that offer health coverage will have to provide a six-page form that summarizes basic plan information, such as deductibles and co-pays, as well as costs for using in-network and out-of-network medical services in clear, standardized language.

HCR Update from Mark Sanna: Researchers from Harvard Medical School and the Mongan Institute for Health Policy at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston surveyed 1,891 physicians nationwide and one-tenth said they had told a patient something untruthful in the last year. Nearly 20 percent of physicians surveyed said they had not fully disclosed an error to a patient in the previous year because they feared a malpractice case.

HCR Update from Mark Sanna: Congressional Republicans, seizing on the type of social issue that motivates and unifies their base, stepped forcefully Wednesday into the battle over an Obama administration rule requiring health insurance plans provided by Catholic universities and charities to offer free birth control to women, vowing to fight back with legislation to unravel the new policy.

HCR Update from Mark Sanna: House and Senate negotiators are deadlocked over how to prevent a deep cut in Medicare payments to doctors who treat millions of Medicare beneficiaries, an impasse that could threaten broader legislation on a payroll tax cut. In the absence of agreement, doctors’ fees will be cut 27% next month, and many doctors say they could not continue treating Medicare patients under the lower payments.

HCR Update from Mark Sanna: This week, House Ways and Means Chairman Dave Camp said that using war savings to pay for an overhaul of the Medicare physician payment formula is likely out of the scope of the conference committee's deliberations. In addition, the proposal faces political obstacles.

HCR Update from Mark Sanna: On Friday, the nation’s pre-eminent breast cancer advocacy group, the Susan G. Komen for the Cure foundation, reversed course and restored it’s relationship with Planned Parenthood, which has used the Komen money to provide breast cancer screening and education to thousands of low-income women.

HCR Update from Mark Sanna: The Republican-led House on Wednesday voted to repeal a financially troubled part of the 2010 health care law that was designed to provide affordable long-term care insurance. The House vote comes months after the Obama administration suspended the Community Living Assistance Services and Support program, known as the CLASS Act.

HCR Update from Mark Sanna: In a decision that is inflaming passions on both sides of the abortion debate, the world’s largest breast cancer organization, Susan G. Komen for the Cure, is cutting off its financing of breast cancer screening and education programs run by Planned Parenthood affiliates.