The Congressional Budget Office this morning put a pricetag on the Democrat’s health reform bill — $940 billion over 10 years — but also said the plan would do more to reduce the deficit than either of the previous House or Senate proposals.

Kaiser Health News offers the roundup of coverage, which also lays out the end-game for a vote on the bill, which could come as soon as Sunday.

Amnesty International, the global human rights organization, took an unprecedented step earlier this month and issued a report that examines a critical aspect of the U.S. health care system — and its findings are troubling. The report, “Deadly Delivery: The Maternal Mortality Crisis in the U.S.A,” documents a steady increase in the number of deaths, “near misses,” and severe complications experienced by women during pregnancy and childbirth:

Maternal mortality ratios have actually increased from a low of 6.6 deaths per 100,000 live births in 1987 to 13.3 deaths per 100,000 live births in 2006. While some of the increase may be due to improved data collection, the fact
that maternal mortality ratios have doubled is a cause for concern.

African-American woman are at greater risk, the report says, but white women and the wealthy are not immune. Indeed, the report says, despite the fact that the U.S. spends more on health care than any other country in the world:

Women in the USA have a greater lifetime risk of dying of pregnancy-related complications than women in 40 other countries. For example, the likelihood of a woman dying in childbirth in the USA is five times greater than in Greece, four times greater than in Germany, and three times greater than in Spain. More than two women die every day in the USA from pregnancy-related causes.

Maureen Corry, executive director of Childbirth Connection, a research and advocacy group in New York (and a past CommonHealth contributor) said in a statement that the increase in maternal mortality is directly linked to greater reliance of medical interventions in maternity care:

“Primary among the many factors behind the crisis in maternity care is the simple fact that routine maternity care is not following the best evidence on what is safe and effective for women and babies. Instead, we’re overusing certain interventions like c-section and elective induction, and underusing beneficial ones like smoking cessation during pregnancy and continuous support during labor, that we know lead to better outcomes.”

Nancy Turnbull, a senior lecturer in health policy at the Harvard School of Public Health, issued a call to the crowd gathered at U Mass Boston Tuesday afternoon for Day 1 of the Division of Health Care Finance and Policy hearings seeking ways to contain rising health care costs.

“Do not be afraid and don’t be a chicken,” Turnbull said, channeling the story of Chicken Little. She added: “We’ve deluded ourselves into thinking we can reduce health care costs wthout sacrifice,” but, she warned, getting the job done will take “hard choices, political leadership and pain.”

Indeed.

Liz Kowalczyk of The Boston Globe reports that state lawmakers announced they favor a plan to control costs by capping payments to doctors and hospitals.

The hearings continue on Thursday and Friday, with testimony on the health care delivery system and strategies — some of them painful — to contain the skyrocketing costs.

NPR’s Mara Liasson reports on the group Organizing For America, the effective grass-roots coalition built during the 2008 presidential campaign that was supposed to help President Obama pass legislation. So far, according to Liasson’s report, OFA has been a disapointment, and the question is whether it can regroup and help Democrats in time for the midterm elections.

In another in-depth report on OFA, the publication, In These Times offers a lengthy account of the shortcomings of the movement, particularly its push for health care reform.

The Boston Globe is reporting that Cleve Killingsworth, the CEO of Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Massachusetts, has resigned.

Former chief executive William Van Faasen will return to run the insurer on an interim basis, according to a Blue Cross press release, while the company searches for a permanent successor.

The Globe story says:

Earlier this month, Blue Cross decided to separate the jobs of chairman and chief executive of the company. Killingsworth turned the chairman’s position over to Paul Guzzi, a Blue Cross director and president of the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce.

Blue Cross recently reported a loss of $149.2 million for 2009. About $95 million of that loss was attributed to the company’s write-down of stocks and investment property to a market value below their purchase price.

Roughly four years ago, Van Faasen generated some controversy when he received $16.4 million in a lump-sum retirement benefit when he stepped down as chief executive. The size of that payment was considered extraordinary by some because as a nonprofit, Blue Cross-Blue Shield is expected to use surpluses to support its healthcare mission.

As if the entire weekend of torrential rain wasn’t depressing enough, today’s New York Times offers more gloomy news: it’s a story about the mind-boggling amount of money being spent to influence lawmakers on health care reform.

With a vote on President Obama’s health care legislation expected as early as this week, reporter Jeff Zeleny says the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is leading a group of opponents, who together have already spent $11 million this month (with more to come) to target 27 House Democrats who supported the bill last year and 13 who were against it. Of course, supporters of the measure are also spending millions, the report says. Zeleny writes:

The Chamber of Commerce is leading the opposition to the health care bill with a coalition called Employers for a Healthy Economy. In two weeks, the group has bought more than $7 million in television advertising and plans to spend up to $3 million more. Americans for Prosperity, a group financed by David Koch, the oilman, is also jumping into the fray with an advertising campaign of nearly $1 million.

An alliance of groups supporting the health care plan, which works closely with the White House and Democratic leaders, had been spending far less and focusing on fewer districts. But after pharmaceutical companies made a $12 million investment for a final advertising push, spending by both sides for the first time is now nearly the same.

Meanwhile, President Obama is doing what he can to corral enough Democrats to pass his top domestic priority. Zeleny reports:

Mr. Obama is making daily telephone calls to Democrats who supported the health care bill last year, but have yet to decide how they intend to vote this time. He is also focusing on those who opposed the legislation, including Representative Dennis J. Kucinich of Ohio, who said the measure did not go far enough.

The president’s trip to Ohio includes Mr. Kucinich’s district, and he invited the congressman to join him aboard Air Force One. Mr. Kucinich said he was grateful for the ride and for the president’s visit, but added that he was disinclined to support the bill as it stands.

“Barack Obama is my president; I want him to succeed,” Mr. Kucinich said in an interview. “But I think it’s important to have real health care reform. I wish I could vote for it, but I don’t think I can.”

A recent judicial ruling adds to the mounting medical evidence that vaccines do not cause autism in children, according to a story in today’s New York Times.

Donald G. McNeil, Jr. reports that “three judges ruled Friday in three separate cases that thimerosal, a preservative containing mercury, does not cause autism.”

(Thimerasol, which was routinely used in vaccines more than a decade ago, has been removed from almost all children’s vaccines.)

The judicial rulings, part of the so-called “Omnibus Autism Proceeding,” which combined the cases of 5,000 families with autistic children seeking compensation from a federal vaccine injury fund, were strongly worded, the Times says:

The master in the King ruling emphasized that it was “not a close case” and “extremely unlikely” that Jordan’s autism was connected to his vaccines. The master in the Dwyer case wrote that many parents “relied upon practitioners and researchers who peddled hope, not opinions grounded in science and medicine.”

Patricia Campbell-Smith, the master in the Mead case, also dismissed two subarguments made by a few opponents of vaccines, saying they “have not shown either that certain children are genetically hypersusceptible to mercury or that certain children are predisposed to have difficulty excreting mercury.”

She also echoed a contention by vaccine defenders that a shot is safer than a tuna sandwich. “A normal fish-eating diet by pregnant mothers” is more likely to deposit mercury in the brain than vaccines are, she wrote.

But those arguments — like previous medical studies that have shown no link — did little to dampen the belief of some parents who are convined that the vaccine theory of autism is real.

The Times quotes one parent, Amy Carson, the founder of Moms Against Mercury, who has a son with brain damage, comparing the proceedings of the vaccine court to “the mice overseeing the cheese.”

In a last-ditch attempt to incorporate Republican priorities into his health care reform bill, and appeal to a wary public, President Obama announces a plan to crack down on health care fraud by using private auditors to uncover improper payments of all kinds, according to a Kaiser Health News roundup.

The Boston Globe’s story on Obama’s new proposal makes the plan sound really cool and futuristic, with the President calling for “high-tech bounty hunters to help root out health care fraud, grabbing a populist idea with bipartisan backing in his final push to overhaul the system.” The story continues:

“Waste and fraud are pervasive problems for Medicare and Medicaid. … Improper payments — in the wrong amounts, to the wrong person or for the wrong reason — totaled an estimated $54 billion in 2009. … The bounty hunters in this case would be private auditors armed with sophisticated computer programs to scan Medicare and Medicaid billing data for patterns of bogus claims. The auditors would get to keep part of any funds they recover for the government.” (Alonso-Zaldivar, 3/9)

With so many months of debate over health reform, much of it focused on politics, it’s not surprising that many people have forgotten (or never really knew) what, exactly, is in the health care overhaul measure that President Obama is now pushing — hard, according to today’s New York Times.

So NPR’s Julie Rovner, offers a short refresher on what the bill is about, including the skinny on insurance mandates, help for poor and low-income folks through Medicaid and so-called “exchanges.”

Of course, politics are still driving the debate, Rovner reports:

Now House Democrats are being asked to cast a vote for the bill the Senate passed Christmas Eve. And, at least initially, they’ll have to approve that Senate bill with no changes.

That means, as Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) reminded everyone at last month’s meeting, “It still has the sweetheart deals in it. … I mean, what’s fair about taxpayers in Louisiana paying less than taxpayers in Tennessee? And what’s fair about protecting seniors in Florida and not protecting seniors in California and Illinois and Wyoming?”

Alexander was referring to several deals cut by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to win the 60 Democratic votes needed to get the bill passed by the Senate.

Of course, here’s where this process gets even more complicated. Those so-called sweetheart deals are expected to be cancelled in a second bill. That so-called fix bill will carry the compromises now being made between the Senate and the House. That bill is also likely to alter the way the health care program is paid for.

But that second bill is still being drafted, and House Democrats are skittish about its ultimate prospects. Don’t expect a House vote on the Senate bill until they get some assurances about what that second bill will do — and that the Senate can actually pass it.

Former Gov. Mitt Romney, promoting his new book and a potential candidacy for president on the talk show circuit, told Fox News that the health care industry overhaul that he presided over in Massachusetts is completely different than the plan now being promoted by President Obama, according to The Huffington Post.

The piece noted that Romney’s logic was “a bit tortured:”

Romney, appearing on “Fox News Sunday,” defended the universal health care system he put into place as governor as the “ultimate conservative plan,” the “ultimate pro-life effort” and one that is “working well.” But the Massachusetts Republican seemed incredulous that Obama would think of doing similar reform on the federal level.

“This is a federalist nation. States should be able to solve their own problems,” he said.

Romney refused to acknowledge that his plan was similar to Obama’s. Though, as host Chris Wallace point out, on many key measures — an individual and employer mandate, subsidies for those who would have trouble buying insurance, and minimum standards for coverage — the two plans converged. The likely 2012 presidential candidate pointed out that the president’s plan included cuts to Medicare and additional taxes. But both of those measures are designed, in part, to provide funds to keep per capita spending down — something that the Massachusetts plan failed to do. Finally, Romney touted the fact that his plan included “no controls over insurance premiums, price controls,” which provides some explanation for why premiums in the Bay State are the highest in the nation.

“It is the difference between a racehorse and a donkey if you will. They both have four legs,” Romney said. “But one works pretty well and the other is not working and would not work at all.”

Frankly, it seems to me like there’s an awful lot of overlap in the two plans. But it may not much matter in the end, if Obama fails to pull off health reform at all, a scenerio Frank Rich fretted about eloquently in yesterday’s New York Times.