President Obama wrote a letter to congressional leadership outlining (in a general sense) what he wants to see in terms of the sidecar legislation for the healthcare bill.
Strangely, he included several Republican ideas.
1. Engaging "medical professionals to conduct random undercover investigations of health care providers that receive reimbursements from Medicare, Medicaid, and other Federal programs."
2. An additional $50 million in funding to states "for demonstrations of alternatives to resolving medical malpractice disputes, including health courts."
3. Additional funds for Medicaid reimbursements to doctors to correct the problem that those reimbursements are currently "inadequate in many states."
4. An expansion of Health Savings Accounts (HSAs).
In the grand scheme, these are rather innocuous, but the idea of it is weird. Basically: why? No Republicans will vote for this bill -- that's for sure and the president knows it. I suppose these are minor inclusions for the sake of saying "we tried." Nevertheless, it makes him appear a little naive on the surface -- hasn't he learned that these guys are attempting to sabotage the legislation?