The House Energy and Commerce Committee held a hearing entitled “The Consequences of Obamacare: Impact on Medicaid and State Health Care Reform.” In addition, the House Energy and Commerce Health Subcommittee held hearings on the FY 2012 HHS budget and implementation of the ACA. On March 2, three Congressional panels held hearings on health care fraud: the Senate Finance Committee examined “Preventing Health Care Fraud: New Tools and Approaches to Combat Old Challenges“; the House Ways & Means Oversight Subcommittee focused on “Improving Efforts to Combat Health Care Fraud”; and the Energy & Commerce Committee held a hearing on “Waste, Fraud and Abuse: A Continuing Threat to Medicare and Medicaid”. The fraud hearings covered current and planned regulatory and enforcement initiatives, legislative proposals, and areas of continued program vulnerability. Note that yet another Medicare/Medicaid fraud hearing, this one to be held by the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, is scheduled for March 9.  Also on the Congressional schedule is a March 9 Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Health hearing on “Setting Fiscal Priorities in Health Care Funding” and a March 10 House Education and the Workforce Health Subcommittee hearing on “The Pressures of Rising Costs on Employer Provided Health Care.”