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It’s crunch time in the fight over a health-care bill, so groups for and against the legislation are getting ready for a final push before congressional votes that could come later this month.

These efforts take money, of course, and advocate groups have put together war chests, much of it slated to go to advertising. Here are some of the spending plans outlined in a WSJ report this morning:

Five CEOs from the health-insurance big dogs (UnitedHealth, WellPoint, etc.) are at the White House this morning to discuss — or more accurately, take flack — over the health overhaul’s issue de jour: rising insurance premiums.

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:

Well, there was no breakthrough of understanding between Democrats and Republicans over health care at today’s summit, but there were areas of agreement on some issues. Of course even where there were shared goals, there was division over how to achieve them.

But the aim of the summit was to find shared ground, so here are some small patches of agreement during the session:

President Obama is to post his unified proposal for overhauling the health-care systemon the Internet today so it’s time to start getting use to a new acronym: HIRA.

HIRA stands for the Health Insurance Rate Authority, a new seven-member panel that would be set up to determine what’s a reasonable rate increase for health-insurance policies. The proposed authority would include consumer and industry representatives as well as a doctor and others, reports say.

The president will outline a new health regulation plan, which will include a proposal to have the Fed regulate insurance rate increases, John Bussey tells the News Hub panel.

Original post: AM Report: Obama Tackles Insurers/a>

President Obama is making headway on coming up with a single Democratic overhaul proposal before next week’s televised health summit with Republicans, according to reports this morning.

The presidential plan is supposed to be posted on the Internet by Monday, which — given the differences between the bills already passed by House and Senate Democrats — is taking some doing. Nonetheless, “There will be one proposal” with “some of the best ideas” form both bills, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said yesterday.

Now that it’s expanded health-insurance coverage to nearly all of its citizens, Massachusetts is trying to figure out what to do about the rapid rise of health costs.

The latest proposal comes from the state’s governor, Deval Patrick, who yesterday proposed a bill that would give the state the power to review — and, in some cases, reject — rate increases by doctors and hospitals.

Here’s a key paragraph from the bill:

Suppose a hypothetical drug cost $10 million, was likely to extend life by only a day or two and didn’t improve quality of life. Should insurance pay for the drug?

Probably not — it would increase the cost for everyone paying premiums, without doing much to help the sick. But where do you draw the line?

Spending by private insurers tends to be higher when the hospital market is less competitive, a new study finds.

The study, published in the American Journal of Managed Care, compared geographic patterns of Medicare spending, using the Dartmouth Atlas data, with spending by big employers that cover their workers. The upshot was that the two didn’t correlate.