BLOGGER Vs. BLOGGER: Debating the Latest Bowles-Simpson Plan

Last week, Erskine Bowles and former Sen. Alan Simpson (R-Wyo.) released a $2.4 trillion deficit-reduction proposal in an attempt to bridge the gap between Obama and the GOP and show that a budget deal to avoid the sequester still is achievable.

BLOGGER VS. BLOGGER: CBO Budget Projections Spark Discussion on Health Spending

Recently, the Congressional Budget Office released a budget analysis for fiscal years 2013 to 2023, lowering its past spending projections for Medicare by hundreds of billions of dollars, the New York Times reports.

AHL’s TOP STORY: Bowles, Simpson Propose $2.4 Trillion Deficit-Reduction Plan To Avoid Sequester Cuts

Erskine Bowles and former Sen. Alan Simpson (R-Wyo.) — former co-chairs of President Obama’s deficit-reduction commission — yesterday unveiled a $2.4 trillion deficit-reduction proposal, which includes $600 billion in federal entitlement savings over a decade, in hopes of staving off the automatic cuts under sequestration that take effect in March, Modern Healthcare reports (Zigmond, Modern Healthcare, 2/19).

Bipartisan Support for Exchanges Could Help Lawmakers With ACA Implementation

With the implementation of the Affordable Care Act picking up nationwide, a majority of U.S. residents — who identify themselves as Democrats or Republicans — said they consider the creation of health insurance exchanges under the ACA the top health policy priority for their state moving forward, according to a new survey from the Kaiser Family Foundation.

KFF collaborated with the Harvard School of Public Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation on the poll, which surveyed a nationally representative random sample of 1,347 adults earlier this month.

At a briefing to discuss the poll on Thursday, the report’s authors said the findings could create an opportunity — or “wiggle room” — for lawmakers to strengthen public support for the implementation of the ACA.

Quotes From Kaiser Family Foundation Briefing, Discussion on Priorities for Health Policy

At a public briefing on Thursday, the Kaiser Family Foundation – in collaboration with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and Harvard School of Public Health – presented the results of a new public poll on key health policy priorities for state and federal lawmakers. The findings informed a discussion between officials from the two organizations and Harvard with reporters from the New York Times, NPR and the Wall Street Journal about some of the nation’s biggest economic and health policy issues.

Here are some notable quotes from that discussion.