Republican Scott Brown, fresh off his victory in the Massachusetts race for U.S. Senate, called on the secretary of state to send him to Washington immediately, saying Wednesday that he wants to send health insurance reform “back to the drawing board.”
Though the state typically waits at least 10 days to collect absentee ballots before certifying, the senator-elect said he’s “confident” his margin of victory — 5 points and nearly 110,000 votes — was greater than the number of outstanding ballots.

Brown is champing at the bit to be sworn in since he would become the 41st Republican in the Senate, breaking the Democrats’ 60-vote supermajority and potentially scuttling health care reform if it returns to the chamber for a final vote.
“Since the election is not in doubt, I’m hopeful that the Senate will seat me on the basis of those unofficial returns,” Brown said, adding that he’s already spoken to members of the state’s congressional delegation, including Sen. John Kerry, and will travel to Washington Thursday. “I think it’s important that we hit the ground running because there’s some very important issues facing our country.”

On health care reform, he said he wants “everyone” to have some form of health care coverage, but questioned plans to slash Medicare and raise taxes to do it.
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Brown Ready to Hit Ground Running

When it comes to the president’s health-care reform, both of Southern Arizona’s congressional representatives are seen as “in play,” uncommitted votes that could go either way.
Which is putting both under intense pressure to get off the pointy end of the fencepost they’re perched on, one way or the other.
Congressman Raúl Grijalva, who doesn’t like the fact the Senate bill doesn’t have a public option, was summoned to the White House Thursday afternoon with seven other progressives for a sit-down with the president, who has said he wants the effort sewn up by the time Congress leaves for Easter break on March 26.

Grijalva left the Roosevelt Room roundup sounding like he’s close to voting for with the president, despite the lack of a public option he considers critical. After the meeting, he said a partial victory on health care would be better than losing everything, at this point.
Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, meanwhile, is the target of tea party rallies and a week long “Code Red” robocall campaign by the National Republican Congressional Caucus, which is targeting voters in swing districts. The script warns listeners to call Giffords “before it is too late and tell her to vote ‘no’ on Nancy Pelosi’s dangerous health-care scheme.”

On the other side, Organizing for America took out an ad in USA Today that says, “You Fight, We’ll Fight.” It pledged 8 million volunteer hours to assist congressional representatives who hold steady on supporting the plan, which Giffords has already said she doesn’t like. Arizona Director Jessica Jones said that so far, 700 volunteers are committed to help the state’s Democrats.
“We will be making sure that we are backing up their legislators and letting them know their constituents are behind them,” Jones said, because too many Americans have gone without insurance for too long. “We’ve been debating this for a year now and it’s really crunch time. We need to get this bill passed.”

A proposal by Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer to cut 300,000 people from the health care plan for the poor will likely “increase the misery index,” a Prescott doctor said.
Dr. Joseph Goldberger, chief medical officer for the Yavapai Regional Medical Center and a rheumatologist with a private practice, said about 15 to 20 percent of the patients he sees at his rheumatology consulting practice are insured by the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System, the Arizona equivalent of Medicaid. Already, AHCCCS fees to doctors have been frozen, he said.

“The untold story is patients with or without insurance continue to get the care,” Goldberger said. “They get the most expensive care of all: ER care. Everybody else ends up paying for that through higher premiums. It has a significant impact.”Many of his arthritis patients need “very expensive” medications and “without insurance, they can’t afford them at all. The bigger problem is the access to medications.”
While that may not be life threatening in all situations, it certainly increases pain levels for arthritis patients.
In some situations, such as with a lupus patient who has kidney disease and can’t get access to chemotherapy, it could be life threatening, he said.

While Goldberger understands that the state is having budget problems and that education and health care are candidates for cost cuts, there are consequences, such as the loss of federal matching funds.
Health providers face a total cut of $67.7 million in state and federal money, according to the Arizona Hospital and Healthcare Association. The association protested the plan to transfer AHCCCS’s remaining graduate medical education money and nearly all private disproportionate hospital dollars to other uses. Arizona’s hospitals have seen $278 million in state funding cuts since 2008, trade group officials said.
Reduction in payments for training doctors – the graduate medical education money – is particularly egregious, said John Rivers, the hospital association president and CEO.