Content about Senate

ORLANDO, Fla. The third annual Retail Clinician Education Congress kicked off here Monday, attracting nearly 500 nurse practitioners for the two-and-a-half-day live continuing education conference for retail-based healthcare providers. Hosted by Retail Clinician magazine in conjunction with the Convenient Care Association, RCEC 2010 convened in line with the start of National Convenient Care Clinic Week, which became official last week when Sens. Dan Inouye, D-Hawaii, and Thad Cochran, D-Miss., introduced a Senate resolution.

WHAT IT MEANS AND WHY IT'S IMPORTANT The Senate medication therapy management bill, introduced on June 29 by Sen. Kay Hagan, D-N.C., has been backed by the National Association of Chain Drug Stores and the National Community Pharmacists Association -- and for good reason. For health reform to have any real teeth, MTM needs to be a meaningful part of it -- and if MTM is going to have any real teeth, retail pharmacy needs to be a part of it.

WHAT IT MEANS AND WHY IT'S IMPORTANT Chain and independent pharmacy retailers learned a long time ago that going to bat for disadvantaged consumers in the communities they serve often can make good economic sense, as well as make them good corporate citizens. Their current campaign to convince Congress to extend the temporary federal boost in medical assistance for lower-income Americans hit hard by a brutal recession is a perfect case in point.

With the defeat of Democrat Martha Coakley by Republican Scott Brown in the race to fill the seat of late Massachusetts Sen. Ted Kennedy, and the loss of the Democrats’ filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, the healthcare-reform bill stands on a knife’s edge. And how will pharmacies be reimbursed for dispensing generic drugs to Medicaid and Medicare patients if a health overhaul bill fails to pass?

NEW YORK The mid-December plea by 16 members of Congress to assure a fair payment for pharmacies that dispense generic drugs to Medicaid patients was welcome news. But with the movement to pass a health-reform bill reaching a crescendo in the Senate, the flawed Medicaid pharmacy reimbursement system still is a hot potato that too few lawmakers seem willing or able to touch.

More aptly, it’s a political football that keeps getting tossed around the House and Senate health-reform debate.

NEW YORK After months of hard-edged wrangling in Congress, on the Sunday morning political gab fests, on talk radio, in angry town-hall meetings and in dueling blogs online, the fate of President Obama’s top domestic priority – namely, the overhaul of the nation’s fractured healthcare system and the expansion of health coverage to the uninsured – appeared increasingly threatened. A growing chorus of Beltway insiders and pundits on the left and right were all but declaring health-reform legislation dead in the water for 2009.

NEW YORK After decades of fruitless efforts, activist lawmakers in a Democratically controlled Congress finally may be on the verge of pushing through one of the most elusive policy goals of the past half-century: a massive reform of the U.S. healthcare system that aims to extend health coverage to most Americans and put a clamp on federal healthcare spending.

NEW YORK Support for a regulatory pathway for biosimilars has grown rapidly, and even a few branded companies, such as Merck & Co. and Pfizer, have expressed interest. But Rep. Henry Waxman's, D-Calif., request that the Obama administration look for legal means to let the FDA approve biosimilars before his bill, its companion in the Senate or fellow California Democratic Rep. Anna Eshoo’s competing bill is put to a vote, is a strong signal that biogenerics are going to be a reality in American health care — and sooner rather than later.

WASHINGTON Doesn’t anybody here pay their taxes? Tom Daschle, the former powerful leader of the Democrats in the U.S. Senate, was one of President Barack Obama’s earliest Cabinet selections and his top choice to run both the huge federal healthcare bureaucracy and a new, White House office spearheading the planned overhaul of the healthcare system.