THE NEXT STEP IN OVERHAULING HEALTH CARE
The Senate Finance Committee will vote on a Health Care Plan today, and probably pass it says analyst Henry Aaron of the Brookings Institution.
"The bulk of the members of the Senate Finance Committee seem to have had pretty firm positions."
But in the version they're voting the mandate requiring everybody, including healthy young people to buy health insurance, has been substantially watered down. Which won't work for the insurance industry says Karen Ignani, President of American Health Insurance Plans.
"We need to have everybody participate, otherwise people who are in the system will be subsidizing those who refuse to purchase coverage."
And Paul Ginsburg of the Center for Studying Health Reform says everybody has to be in the insurance pool for the math to work.
"If people aren't mandated to buy insurance, you know then you'll get a situation where people stay uninsured until they get sick."
The Senate Finance Committee vote today is only the first step down a very long tortuous road says CBS News Political Director Steve Chaggaris.
"Whatever comes out of the Finance Committee today is going to have to be reconciled with what has already been passed out of another Senate committee which includes a public option. That's just the Senate side. The House side has their own bill they have to worry about, three bills actually out of three different committees, all including the public option."
There won't be much Republican support for that, will there?
"If they can't get Republicans on board with this version of it, there's probably a good chance they aren't going to get any Republicans on board moving down the road."
So how long before President Obama gets a health care bill on his desk?
"You know the bottom line is...there are a lot of fights...this is just the beginning of weeks and weeks of debate that's going to go on in Congress before the President actually sees the bill."
KEEPING AN EYE ON FOREIGNERS
By now, eight years after the September 11th terrorist attacks, we're supposed to have a way of finding our whether a foreign visitor who was supposed to leave after a certain period of time actually has left. If not, then presumably they're still here illegally.
Congress has mandated that we get such a system. But even with all the fabulous advances that have been made in search engines and information storage and retrieval...
"The fact is that we do not have a full system of monitoring exits."
Marc Rosenblum is senior analyst at the Migration Policy Institute.
"The challenge is there is a lot of legal traffic in and out of the United States at a lot of different ports of entry. Both at...land borders are a particular challenge because we have a million legal crossings a day."
Officials say about 40 percent of the 11 million illegal immigrants living here came in on legal temporary visas and just never left.
Last week, 19-year-old Jordanian Hosam Maher Husein Smadi, who overstayed his tourist visa, was accused in court of plotting to blow up a Dallas skyscraper. Officials had no idea he hadn't left when he was supposed to.
"The reason that he eventually got flagged was because he aroused security concerns for his activities on fundamentalist websites. So once he was sort of in the system that way, you know the system worked to find him and track him down and that wasn't an immigration tool per se."
Two-point-nine-million foreign visitors arrived here on temporary visas last year. They could all still be here for all we know.
"To put in a system where every single person leaving the United States has to give a biometric, there's been a lot of push back against that."
NORTH KOREA DEMANDS ATTENTION!
Why do some kids act up and misbehave the way they do? It's very frustrating to parents, schoolteachers and others in authority. Some experienced behavioral experts say it's their way of getting attention when they think not enough attention is being payed to them.
Experienced experts in foreign affairs often say the same thing about North Korea when it fires test missiles as it did yesterday and apparently is getting ready to do again. Typical, typical says CBS News National Security Consultant Juan Zarate.
"These are fairly typical for North Korea, so I'm not sure we should read too much into it. That said, the North Koreans are known for drawing attention to themselves when they perceive they are no longer getting the type of international and diplomatic attention they deserve."
Just because North Korea says one thing then does another, wants to sweet talk and bare it's fangs at the same time, does not mean that it's abhorrent behavior has no method behind the apparent madness says Juan Zarate.
"It has learned from the past that these kinds of actions, military tests, the nuclear tests, other types of bellacosity, is really been a way of not only garnering attention but sometimes concession."
The grown up nations can be chiding, disapproving sometimes when North Korea acts up.
"The international community will not accept their continuing nuclear program."
That's Secretary of State Hilary Clinton .You just act up all you want, we're paying no attention she'll say.
"Our goal remains the same. Our consultations with our partners and allies continues unabated. It is unaffected by the behavior of North Korea."
North Korea is simply doing what it always does, says Charles Armstrong with Columbia University's Center for Korean Research.
"Seems to be, once again, North Korea playing both sides. Being conciliatory, at the same time showing that they are a force to be reckoned with. That they have missiles that they are able to use."
PICK THE RIGHT HOSPITAL. YOUR LIFE DEPENDS ON IT MORE THAN YOU KNOW.
The latest edition of Healthgrades annual survey of the nation's five thousand non-federal hospitals is out and it says in effect if you have to go to the hospital, be sure to go to a good one. Why?
"There's a huge gap in quality between hospitals around the country. In fact, patients have a 52 percent lower chance of dying at the top rated hospitals compared to national average hospitals."
There are good hospitals and bad hospitals in every part of the country, says the new HealthGrades survey. But co-author Dr. Rick May says some of the very best seem to cluster in certain regions.
"The North-Central portion of the country overall has some terrific performing hospitals. Areas like Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio have great outcomes consistently."
And that's also true of some of the worst.
"Surprisingly, in another entire region, what we call the South-Central Region, which consists of Alabama, Kentucky, Mississippi, and Tennessee. That region of the country consistently under-performs. They tend to have the worst hospitals overall."
Although there are a few excellent hospitals there as well.
As a patient, you live where you live, so the hospital next door may not be the best choice for you. Investigate, says Dr. May.
"For most of our health care choices, we do have a fair amount of options. So its important for patients to really take their time and look at what is available. And there may not be the best performing hospital right next door, but there may be some other options to go to a nearby hospital, especially for big procedures that are going to be scheduled, like a cardiac bypass operation or a knee replacement."
Across all 17 procedures and diagnoses studied, the mortality rate was about 50 percent better in a five star rated hospital than in an average of a three star one.
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