Mid-week update

Axios has an interesting report on where the current state of healthcare re-reform after four Senators came out against the Better Care Reconciliation Act on Monday thereby causing Senate Majority Leader McConnell to fall short on the vote count.

All of the Republican senators who oppose the Senate health care bill are meeting tonight to work out their differences — after being told by President Trump this afternoon that they need to work late into the night to get a deal. The holdouts, including moderates and conservatives, are scheduled to meet in Sen. John Barrasso's office at 7:30 pm Eastern with the goal of getting a deal to revive the shelved Affordable Care Act repeal and replacement bill, according to sources with direct knowledge of the discussions.

The Congressional Budget Office reported as the FEHBlog has been typing this out that "Later today, CBO and the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) will release estimates of the effects of the [Senate's] Obamacare Repeal Reconciliation Act of 2017.

Meanwhile, the House Budget Committee is working on an FY 2018 budget resolution. A markup hearing was held today.  Federal News Radio reports on the budget resolution's impact on federal employees and annuitants. Modern Healthcare further informs us that

The House Budget Committee on Wednesday agreed [at its markup hearing] to bake in hundreds of billions in Medicaid cuts from its ACA repeal bill to the budget resolution, plus an additional $114 billion in cuts over 10 years.
The committee's Republicans' unanimously approved the decision with no Democrats on board. The budget resolution, which is the foundation for passing tax reform in the Senate without Democratic votes, also assumes Medicare will reduce spending by $487 million from 2018 to 2027.
Some of the additional savings would come from imposing a work requirement on Medicaid adult beneficiaries who are younger than 65 and are not on Social Security disability as a condition of eligibility.

 The resolution now heads to the House floor.

On the disease front, the American Hospital Association tells us that

An estimated 12.2% of U.S. adults had diabetes in 2015, including one in four aged 65 and older, according to the latest national estimates released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Nearly one-quarter of the 30.2 million adults with diabetes were not aware they had it, based on data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey and Census Bureau. Fasting glucose and hemoglobin A1C levels were used to derive estimates for undiagnosed diabetes and prediabetes. About one-third of adults (84.1 million) had prediabetes, blood glucose levels at risk of progressing to diabetes, including nearly half of adults aged 65 and older. "Consistent with previous trends, our research shows that diabetes cases are still increasing, although not as quickly as in previous years," said Ann Albright, director of CDC's Division of Diabetes Translation. "Diabetes is a contributing factor to so many other serious health conditions. By addressing diabetes, we limit other health problems such as heart disease, stroke, nerve and kidney diseases, and vision loss."

Those are startling numbers.  Meanwhile that Washington Post reports on an ongoing study that is suggesting that the use of PET scans can significantly improve of the accuracy of Alzheimer Disease diagnoses.