For today's health care read, check out these new stories from Think Progress and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP):

CBO May Have Undershot Medicare’s Future Deficit Reduction By Over $300 Billion

Projected Medicaid Spending Has Fallen by More Than $200 Billion

While many Republicans balked at passing $60 billion in relief for Hurricane Sandy cleanup (they eventually passed a little higher than $50 billion), TIME’s Steven Brill wrote that the United States spends nearly that much in health care costs each week.

In Bitter Pill: Why Medical Bills Are Killing Us, Brill asks the question very few people raise: Why does the United States pay so much for health care?

Americans overspend $750 billion in health care each year. One-fifth of our economy enriches very few at the expense of everyone else. Labs, drug companies, medical device makers, hospital administrators and purveyors of CT scans, MRIs, canes and wheelchairs are some of the entities and people reaping the financial rewards by gaming the health care system, writes Time magazine's Steven Brill in a fascinating, in-depth look at why health care prices are just "too damn high" in Bitter Pill: Why Medical Bills Are Killing Us. 

If you're curious how much more the Romney-Ryan Medicare plan will cost you, the Center for American Progress Action Fund has a new infographic which spells out exactly what you'd be paying for health care. It's not pretty. View the entire Center for American Progress Action Fund Medicare Infographic.

Are you a senior who needs life-saving cancer treatment? No problem, says Mitt Romney’s new running mate, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.). Just make sure you brought your envelope of Romney-RyanCare coupons to the hospital (a.k.a. Medicare vouchers). 

Ohio AFL-CIO, SEIU, ProgressOhio and other allied groups gathered outside a Mitt Romney campaign stop last week in Chillicothe, Ohio, to spread the word about the harmful Romney-Ryan budget and how it would affect Medicare beneficiaries. 

The U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling that the Affordable Care Act (ACA) is constitutional “is only beginning of the next phase of health care reform,” said the AFL-CIO Executive Council in a statement from its August meeting in Washington, D.C., this week.

The path forward should be clear: First, we must move full speed ahead to implement the ACA; second, we must firmly reject efforts to undo the progress that already has been made with the ACA, Medicaid and Medicare; and third, we must build upon the ACA, Medicaid and Medicare to achieve our goal of quality health care for all.

John August, executive director of the Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions, sends us this update on the Affordable Care Act and health care reform. The coalition is an alliance of 29 local unions representing 90,000 health care workers.

The Supreme Court decision upholding the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act was great. No question! And while we are pleased with the direction of the law, there are still many obstacles that stand in the way of ultimate success.

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka released the following statement on the U.S. Supreme Court's decision this morning upholding the Affordable Care Act.