House and Senate leaders are preparing for floor debate to reconcile the differences in the five major health care bills. AEI scholars are analyzing the various bills--and what they will mean for the future of health care.

• Scott Harrington responded to the summary Baucus provided in the Enterprise Blog, saying it "reflects the same basic 'government knows best' philosophy and therefore has substantially the same drawbacks as HR 3200.

• On the Health Affairs blog, Thomas P. Miller criticizes a national health exchange, which he says "aims to route all significant health care choices through a centralized political toll booth." His article in Health Affairs examines the unsettled state of measuring hospital and physician performance.

• Joseph Antos's AEI Working Paper and recent Health Policy Outlook argue that while market reforms will not be a panacea in terms of bringing down health care costs, market discipline is necessary for effective reform. In a Wall Street Journal article with the Galen Institute's Grace-Marie Turner, he argues that Medicare should not be seen as a good model for reform. In The American, he and former intern Jeet Guram present the reasons a public plan will eliminate private insurers, not make them better.

• Antos and Mark V. Pauly joined other notable academics and scholars to provide an outline for reducing long-term health expenditures in a recent paper released by The Brookings Institution.

• Prior to the president's speech on health care reform to a joint session of Congress, Newt Gingrich and Martin Feldstein offered suggestions to the president. Gingrich recommended replacing the existing reform plans with four or five health care bills that could garner bipartisan support while Feldstein raised concerns about the cost of health care. Despite the president's announcement that reform would not increase the deficit, Feldstein said "dropping the Obama health plan would significantly reduce fiscal deficits over the next decade and help restore public confidence in the ability of Congress to control spending."

• In the Washington Examiner, Michael Barone writes that it is unrealistic to expect to save money by spending more.

• In a recent Wall Street Journal article, Scott Gottlieb, M.D., points out that the U.S. government already does ration health care: Medicare has been rationing for years.

• The collection of essays in Uncle Sam, M.D. (AEI Press, 2009) provides an indication of the range and depth of AEI's work in health care reform and pharmaceutical policy.