News in brief - Dec. 3, 2007

House fails to override veto of HHS spending bill - Improper Medicare payments drop - Federal appeals court to rule on Virginia abortion ban

House fails to override veto of HHS spending bill

The U.S. House fell two votes short of overriding President Bush's veto of the fiscal year 2008 budget bill for the Dept. of Health and Human Services on Nov. 15. Bush vetoed the legislation on Nov. 13 because the measure -- which also funded labor and education programs -- contained $150.7 billion in discretionary spending, $9.8 billion more than he requested.

Before the 277-141 vote, Rep. David Obey (D, Wis.), chair of the House Appropriations Committee, said that if the veto override failed, Democrats would prepare a spending bill that splits the difference between the president's request and their bill. But there is no guarantee that such a measure would be adopted, putting in jeopardy $1.1 billion in new funding for the National Institutes of Health.

Improper Medicare payments drop

The percentage of improper Medicare claims payments fell from 4.4% in 2006 to 3.9% in 2007, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services announced Nov. 16. That's down from 14.2% in 1996, when the agency first began tracking the figures. The improvement is due to continued efforts by CMS and its contractors to use detailed data analyses to target areas where erroneous claims processing, inaccurate billing and "provider error" result in waste, fraud or abuse, the agency said.

Over the past three years, error rate reductions have led to about $11 billion less in improper payments. CMS pays more than a billion fee-for-service claims each year.

Federal appeals court to rule on Virginia abortion ban

The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals will decide the fate of Virginia's prohibition on what the state calls "partial-birth" abortion. The appeals court heard oral arguments in Richmond Medical Center for Women v. Hicks in November. The case could gauge the impact on state laws of the U.S. Supreme Court's upholding last April of the federal ban on intact dilatation and extraction.

Janet Crepps, an attorney for the Center for Reproductive Rights, which represents the plaintiff medical groups, said the high court's decision was a narrow one and does not "open the floodgates" for broader restrictions like Virginia's. She said the state statute would prohibit other legal, late-term abortion procedures.

The Supreme Court's approval of the federal ban "removes any doubt" that Virginia's law is constitutional, said Martin J. Tucker, a spokesman in the Va. attorney general's office.

Vote refines AMA stance on health reform
The AMA House of Delegates rejected attempts to rescind support of a U.S. House health reform bill and any new government-sponsored health insurance plan during the 2009 Interim Meeting.
Story - AMA House - Slideshow