Orshe

The latest national health spending figures out Monday show slowed growth in medical expenditures in 2010 — and plenty of debate fodder for both policy wonks and political partisans.

For a start, there’s little consensus among analysts over the causes of the slowdown.

Republicans are seizing on the explanation that it’s the product of an economic downturn (which they blame on President Barack Obama).

By Louise Radnofsky

Doctors’ feelings about the health-care overhaul law passed last year are about as mixed as their patients’, research released today shows.

Some 44% of doctors said the law was “a good start,” according to a survey carried out by the Deloitte Center for Health Solutions consulting group. Another 44% agreed that the law was “a step in the wrong direction.”

Many of the 501 physicians surveyed indicated that they had sour feelings about specific aspects of the law.

Easing Heart Fears?: Research published online by the Journal of the American Medical Association suggests no increased risk for serious heart problems in adults stemming from drugs to treat attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder, the WSJ reports. While a study author notes the research doesn’t prove the drugs are safe, it could — especially when combined with a recent study that produced similar findings in children — ease worries about heart risk.

The health-care overhaul law includes a provision requiring insurers to spend a certain proportion of premium dollars on patient care and quality-improvement programs.

It all sounds straightforward enough — large-group plans must spend at least 85% and individual and small-group plans, 80% — but the devil is always in the details.

Screening Kids: Guidelines expected to be presented Sunday by members of National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute panel will call for screening more kids for high cholesterol, the Associated Press reports. Panel members wouldn’t reveal details of the new recommendations ahead of the presentation — which will be at a meeting of the American Heart Association — but said they would include “more aggressive recommendations for cholesterol screening and treatment in children,” the AP says.

For those keeping score of the health-care overhaul law’s record in U.S. appeals courts, the tally now stands at three rulings for the Obama administration and one for the law’s opponents.

As the WSJ reports, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled 2-1 that the health law’s individual mandate — that’s the requirement that most people carry health insurance or pay a penalty — doesn’t violate the Constitution.

Public opinion has tipped against the health-care overhaul passed last year, the Kaiser Family Foundation’s monthly tracking poll finds.

Some 51% of respondents in a major monthly poll now say they have an unfavorable opinion of the legislation passed by Democrats in March 2010, and just 34% of them feel favorably about it, according to a KFF telephone survey of 1,223 people carried out earlier this month.

Here’s a bit of good news for President Obama’s health law: it’s helping drive down the uninsured rate among young adults.

Data released today by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that in the first quarter of 2011, the percentage of adults between ages 19 and 25 without health insurance fell 3.5 percentage points — to 30.4%. That translates to about an additional 1 million people that got coverage from the previous year.