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The White House Announces H1N1 Flu Preparedness Summit
The White House announced that Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, Education Secretary Arne Duncan, and Homeland Security Advisor John Brennan will host an all-day H1N1 Flu Preparedness Summit with states to further prepare this nation for the possibility of a more severe outbreak of H1N1 flu. The Summit will be held on July 9, 2009 at the Natcher Conference Center at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland.
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IMPROVE Bill Seeks To Fight Medicare Fraud
Lawmakers push bill to fight Medicare fraud as part of health reform legislation.
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Sotomayor Resigns From Women's Group
Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor on Friday resigned from an all-women group in an effort to avoid claims that she belonged to a discriminatory organization, according to a letter she wrote to Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and ranking member Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), the Wall Street Journal reports. The group, the Belizean Grove, calls itself a "constellation of influential women" formed in response to the all-male Bohemian Club. Sotomayor wrote, "I believe the Belizean Grove does not practice invidious discrimination, and my membership did not violate the Judicial Code of Ethics, but I do not want questions about this to distract anyone from my qualifications and record." A Senate Republican aide said that GOP members did not plan to object to Sotomayor"s involvement in the group but aimed to compare their position with Democratic objections to previous judicial nominees who were members of all-male groups (Bravin, Wall Street Journal, 6/20).Sotomayor also sent Leahy and Sessions a list of events taken from her own handwritten calendar between 1992 and 1995, which included several entries about events where she spoke. Sessions had told Leahy that he would delay the confirmation proceedings if she did not provide missing information on about 50 speeches she had given. Sotomayor told the senators that she was unable to find drafts or recording of the speeches, noting that her calendar notes did not include details from the speeches (Swanson, The Hill, 6/19).In related news, the New York Times on Saturday examined how "it is far from clear that [Sotomayor"s] judicial record supports the accusation that she is an activist," who, as some critics have claimed, "legislates from the bench." According to the Times, "[s]everal empirical studies have concluded that she is not particularly prone to overriding policy decisions by elected branches." Her decisions that have "attracted the most criticism from conservatives" are "instances in which she deferred to policy decisions by elected branches that conservatives hoped judges would strike down," according to the Times (Savage, New York Times, 6/20).
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White House Seeks More Money For Swine Flu

The White House requested new funding for swine flu from Congress late Tuesday and also sought an additional $3.1 billion from the unspent stimulus funds in case of a pandemic emergency, according to various news s. The Wall Street Journal reports that "President Barack Obama requested $2 billion to prepare for a possible resurgence of the H1N1 swine flu this fall. But he also asked for the authority to take a 1% across-the-board cut to stimulus programs allocated at Congress"s discretion, or $3.1 billion out of the $311 billion in discretionary stimulus funds." The proposal to take stimulus money "immediately prompted criticism from Republicans that Mr. Obama and the Democrats want to turn the stimulus package into what Jennifer Hing, a spokeswoman for House Appropriations Committee Republicans, called an all-purpose "slush fund,"" The Wall Street Journal reports. It added, "With a budget deficit nearing $2 trillion, the stimulus plan is becoming an alluring pot of money. As of May 22, $37 billion, or about 5%, of the total $787 billion plan had been spent, mainly in assistance to states for Medicaid and checks cut by the Social Security Administration" (Weisman, 6/4). Meanwhile, it appears unlikely that Congress will approve Obama"s request for an additional $2 billion to fight the swine flu with U.S House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer expressing doubt Wednesday about the request, Reuters/Washington Post reports. "A pending war funding bill that has already passed the House of Representatives included $2 billion while the Senate version had $1.5 billion," the newspaper writes. "If ... that"s insufficient there"s obviously an opportunity to pass an additional supplemental" at a later date, Hoyer said, adding, "We want to make sure that we have the funds necessary to respond to this pandemic" (6/3). This information was reprinted from kaiserhealthnews.org with kind permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. You can view the entire Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report, search the archives and sign up for email delivery at kaiserhealthnews.org. © Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. All rights reserved.


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