The Lewin Group, which is a subsidary of United Healthcare, prepared a study for the Peter G. Peterson Foundation which concludes that the House leadership bill, H.R. 3200,

would expand health insurance coverage and reduce the number of people who are uninsured. However, the analysis also shows that overallhealth care costs will increase, not decrease, as a result of expanded coverage and other provisions in the legislation. From the perspective of the federal budget, the study shows the Act would nearly achieve President Obama’s goal of paying for itself over the next 10 years. In the second 10 years, however, the proposal would add an estimated $1 trillion to the federal deficit * * * excluding debt service costs) due to rapid growth in health care costs that will outpace the growth in incomes and revenues over the longer-term.

The Politico reports that Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D Montana) will release his bill “as early as [this coming] Tuesday.” The last Gang of Six bipartisan meeting will be held tomorrow. The Domestic Policy Committee of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee will hold a two day long hearing this week to examine the health insurance bureaucracy. According to the Committee’s press release,

On Wednesday, September 16 at 10:00 a.m. in Rayburn House Office Building,
Room 2154, the Subcommittee will hear testimony from patients and health care
providers with personal experience struggling against the bureaucracy of private
health insurance companies to secure needed medical care. The committee will
also hear from a whistleblower; a former health insurance executive who will
testify about internal practices of the industry.

The second part of the hearing on Thursday, September 17 at 2:00 p.m. in the same location will hear testimony from top executives of the 6 largest health insurance companies in the United States.

Surely these executives have better things to do. I trust that they won’t travel to the hearing on private jets.
HHS Secretary Kathleen Sibelius appointed Georgina Verdugo to be the director of HHS’s Office for Civil Rights which is responsible for enforcing the HIPAA Privacy and Security Rules. Ms. Verdugo most recently served as general counsel at the law firm of Garcia Calderon Ruiz LLP in Los Angeles. She previously led the Washington office of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, a civil rights organization according to a Health Data Management report. The AIS Report on Patient Privacy reports that the Office for Civil Rights is vowing vigorous enforcement of the HIPAA rules. The National Institutes of Health announced on Friday that

We are encouraged by reports that are now emerging from various clinical trials
of 2009 H1N1 influenza vaccines, conducted by various vaccine manufacturers. We
expect additional companies to announce their preliminary trial results shortly.
The early data from these trials indicate that 2009 H1N1 influenza vaccines are
well tolerated and induce a strong immune response in most healthy adults when
administered in a single unadjuvanted 15-microgram dose.

The AP reports that

The nation’s first round of swine flu shots could begin sooner than expected, with some vaccine available as early as the first week of October, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said Sunday [today]. Sebelius said she is confident the vaccine will be available early enough to beat the peak of the expected flu season this fall and that early doses are intended for health care workers and other high-priority groups.

I understand that FEHB plans will be covering both the seasonal and H1N1 vaccines.