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Hillary Clinton rolled out several modest but serious health-care proposals last week. This week she canceled out any claim to responsibility on the subject by calling for repeal of the “Cadillac tax” on employer health-care plans. The tax, set to take effect in 2018, is a key component of President Obama’s health-care plan and its most effective means of controlling health-care costs. Without it, Obamacare becomes one more entitlement program facing ever-rising health-care costs that the country will eventually be unable to afford. (9/30)

Hillary Clinton has called for the repeal of the “Cadillac Tax,” a part of the Affordable Care Act that is soon to go into effect, and which most Americans probably know nothing about. You can look at this as a cynical effort to win the support of certain constituencies that are important to Democrats, which it may be. But it’s also yet more evidence that only one party’s presidential candidates are even remotely interested in grappling with the difficult work of policy-making, particularly on the issue of health care. (Paul Waldman, 9/30)

After five years, two midterm disasters, and a rollout that reminded Americans why they fell out of love with big government in the 1970s, reality has finally begun to dawn on some Democrats about Obamacare. With open enrollment about to start and a third straight round of premium spikes about to hit voters’ pockets, the Democrats’ leading presidential candidate has offered a “major break” with the Obama administration on its signature domestic policy achievement. (Edward Morrissey, 10/1)

Who says there’s no bipartisan consensus in the United States? Based on their campaign promises so far, if any of the leading contenders for the Republican and Democratic presidential nominations actually wins in November 2016, Obamacare as we know it is doomed. The Republicans, of course, pledge to repeal the whole thing. The Democrats, by contrast, merely want to hollow it out, by removing a crucial systemic reform, the absence of which will make the Affordable Care Act less able to meet its twin goals of curbing costs and expanding coverage. (Charles Lane, 9/30)

House Republicans called for an investigation of Planned Parenthood this summer, after a series of deceptively edited videos issued by an anti-abortion group, the Center for Medical Progress, alleged that Planned Parenthood profits from the sale of tissue from fetuses. But at a hearing on Tuesday, members of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee deluged Cecile Richards, Planned Parenthood’s president, with a variety of questions entirely unrelated to that issue. (Anna North, 9/30)

Give the Republican majority in Congress credit for abandoning its threat to shut down the federal government in a futile effort to stop funding for Planned Parenthood. Instead, Republicans now aim to attack Planned Parenthood though a powerful budgetary tool called reconciliation, which, unlike a spending bill, cannot be filibustered in the Senate. This shift in tactics will be good for the country, avoiding the needless and economically damaging disruption that a second government shutdown in 24 months would have caused. But the GOP's new approach won't hit its target either. (9/30)

Ten years ago, did you imagine that Planned Parenthood would be the center of our national political life? No, 10 years ago we were just worried about George W. Bush and high oil prices. Sometimes I miss high oil prices. On Wednesday the House passed a bill to keep the government running until December. Only 91 Republicans supported the idea, because it included funding for Planned Parenthood. (Thank you for keeping the national parks open, Nancy Pelosi.) John Boehner resigned because he was exhausted with the fight. (Gail Collins, 10/1)

As s the top ranking Democrat on both the Benghazi and Oversight committees in the House of Representatives, I have a front row seat to watch House Republicans push their highest priorities. Right now, the top two goals for Republicans are to damage Hillary Clinton’s campaign to become the nation’s first woman president and to attack and defund Planned Parenthood, an organization that provides critical healthcare services to millions of women across the country. My assessment is based not only on Republicans’ statements, but also on their actions, and particularly the way in which they are structuring and paying for these efforts in the House. (Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., 9/30)

If congressional squabbling causes the U.S. government to shut down this year, the economy will be fine. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said if the misshapen priorities embedded in the current federal budget are left to fester. ... [U]nder current law, domestic discretionary programs—programs that must be reauthorized each year by Congress—will shrivel to 2.3% of the country’s gross domestic product, the broadest measure of economic output, by 2025, the Congressional Budget Office projects. That would be the lowest since before 1965, down from 3.4% in 2007. ... At the same time, mandatory programs, which don’t need annual authorization and include most of the social safety net, will balloon to 14.1% of GDP by 2025 from 10.1% in 2007, according to the CBO. This is due partly to the Affordable Care Act, but even more to the impact on Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid of an aging population and health care costs, which, after a respite, will outstrip inflation in coming decades. (Greg Ip, 9/30)

So here–in non-ideological terms that hopefully make common sense–is why we cannot afford [conservatives' tax] cuts: based on a number of easily identifiable factors, like our aging population and infrastructure, our government is going to need more, not less, revenue in the future. ... Second, there’s demographics, or to make it personal, aging boomers: we’re gray, we’re here to stay and we’re not going away! ... Well, not for a while, anyway. The figure above shows that the 65 and up population is around 15 percent of the total today, stabilizing a bit north of 20 percent around 2040. The point is again a mechanical one: the fact that a larger share of the population will be in the age ranges supported by Medicare and Social Security implies more spending. According to the Congressional Budget Office’s latest projections, by 2025, spending on Social Security and Medicare will need to go up by just under 2 percent of GDP. (Jared Bernstein, 10/1)

The straight-talking, chain-smoking Ohioan was also the architect of this year’s entitlement reforms. Each year for nearly the past 20, Congress spent time crafting a short-term “doc fix” to stave off mandated cuts in Medicare payments to doctors. Mr. Boehner engineered a permanent solution to the problem and, in the process, passed the first significant reforms in entitlement spending in a decade. (Karl Rove, 9/30)

“Gray’s Anatomy” illustrated the entire human body with 1,247 engravings when it was published in 1918, but starting today doctors must employ nearly 70,000 codes to document their efforts to heal it. The bureaucrats who crowd the corridors of power like plaque in a clogged artery have dreamed up new hoops for medical professionals to jump through. It’s about keeping up with the complexification of health care. (9/30)

After a D.C. ambulance transports someone to a hospital, it takes on average 45 minutes to process the patient. During that time, the ambulance is out of service and unable to respond to other, often more pressing emergencies. That lost time can have life-and-death consequences for a city scrambling to keep up with a spike in calls for medical help. That is why Fire Chief Gregory Dean wants to enlist private ambulances for less serious calls, an idea that has worked well for other cities. (9/30)

It’s official: the James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act has expired. Today, Congress missed an important deadline to reauthorize the World Trade Center Health Program and the 9/11 Victims Compensation Fund, and soon the first responders and survivors of the worst terrorist attack on American soil in our history will receive notice -- the programs that provide healthcare and offer financial support to our 9/11 heroes are expiring. In the final hours of 2010, more than nine years after the attacks, Congress passed the Zadroga Act. We never intended for this important legislation to expire so quickly, but, once again, Washington politics got in the way. We now know 33,000 first responders and survivors across the country suffer from at least one 9/11-related illness or injury, and many have multiple, severe illnesses that impact their lives every day, including 4,000 responders and survivors with cancer. (Reps. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., and Peter King, R-N.Y.)

In 2010, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) created a link between [US Preventive Services Task Force] recommendations and various [insurance] coverage requirements. ... In essence, the ACA leaves discretion to payers regarding coverage for non-A and non-B graded services—as was the case for all preventive services before the ACA. The law adds a “shortcut” to first-dollar coverage for A and B graded services only, leaving discretion to payers for other services. ... Although the ACA has provided an opportunity to link evidence to coverage for the most highly recommended services, these A and B recommended services are a floor, rather than a ceiling, on coverage of preventive services. (Albert L. Siu, Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo and David Grossman, 9/30)