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This post by WSJ’s Peter Landers also is appearing on the Washington Wire blog.

The fate of the Democrats’ health bill is likely to come down to the House, and the vote there hinges on wavering Democrats. The Associated Press surveyed all 39 Democrats who voted against the version of the health overhaul approved by the House on Nov. 7 and found nine who said they would consider switching to yes.

You probably wouldn’t put Microsoft on the list of companies in the market to hire former FDA officials, but the software giant snagged a top medical-device regulator today.

Donna-Bea Tillman, head of the office of device approvals, says her jump to Microsoft isn’t as unusual as it may seem. She told colleagues in a memo she has long had “a love for all things computer.”

The clock is running out before a 21% cut in Medicare payments to doctors kicks in. Plans to block the reductions have gotten hung up in Congress.

Yesterday’s health summit produced seven hours of televised history but little evidence of movement toward a health-care overhaul. No surprise there, but the dividing lines between Democrats and Republicans are clearer now and there could be a silver lining in that.

The big gulfs come down to three basic philosophical disagreements, the WSJ’s Capital Journal column says this morning:

The method of making flu vaccines from chicken eggs is slow and expensive, but it has proved reliable for 60 years. So that’s what drug makers used last year in ramping up a new vaccine to offer protection from the sudden spread of the H1N1 virus.

President Obama’s budget is still in the news this morning, and there’s plenty of interesting health stuff in there. But it’s worth pausing to note that the big drivers are mandatory spending on Medicare and Medicaid — huge, rapidly growing costs that are outside the purview of Obama’s (or any president’s) annual recommendations for discretionary spending.

Take a look at the table on pages 5-7 of this PDF, which explains Obama’s proposed funding of the Department of Health and Human Services.

President Obama was more than 3,000 words into his 7,000-word State of the Union speech last night by the time he got to the health-care overhaul.

What’s more, he referred to the health-care overhaul as “health-insurance reform” — a subtle shift from “health-care reform” and perhaps an indication of the Dems’ move toward less-sweeping changes, and their sharpened focus on health insurance regulation.

The CBO budget report released today says the growth in Medicare and Medicaid spending during the next decade “will be somewhat slower than the average rate seen over the past 10 years.”

Chuck Grassley, a Republican senator and a prolific author of letters, has written to more than 30 hospitals to ask about their experiences — including “complications,” “errors” and “problems” — with health IT systems.

The letters follow a barrage Grassley sent out last fall to some of the companies that sell electronic systems to hospitals and doctors, asking some similar questions.

The future of the Dems’ big health-care bill looks murky, but there’s another big Washington plan that could have profound effects on health care: The idea of creating a bipartisan commission to cut the budget deficit is gaining ground.