Share

2-12-10 This Week in Health Care Reform

ON CAPITOL HILL

 

Unless you were totally avoiding the news this week, you saw that Washington got walloped with snow.  The second blizzard even shut the Senate down – something that rarely ever happens, even when the government is closed.  All this snow has slowed the legislative calendar to a crawl, with multiple items – including the jobs bill and the completion of the health reform effort – beginning to back up.

 

Also this week, President Obama announced that he would convene a televised bipartisan health care summit February 25th, and he invited the leaders of both parties to present ideas on how to move forward on reform.  Leading House Republicans said they may decline to participate if the White House chooses not to scrap the existing reform bills and start over.  On Tuesday, the President invited Republican leaders to the White House in an attempt to jumpstart negotiations.  According to a Washington Post report:

“During the White House meeting, Obama said he told House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) that his core goals of lowering health-care costs and expanding coverage for the uninsured remain non-negotiable, but the president said he will consider GOP alternatives that accomplish the same results.

“Boehner said after the session that House Republicans ‘would like to attend the meeting. We are interested in having these bipartisan conversations and look forward to continuing conversations with the administration. We are considering it.’

“Obama told reporters that he would sign what he considered to be a less-than-perfect health-care bill. ‘I am going to be starting from scratch in the sense that I will be open to any ideas that help promote these goals,’ he said. ‘Let's get the relevant parties together. Let's put the best ideas on the table. My hope is that we can find enough overlap that we can say, This is the right way to move forward, even if I don't get every single thing that I want.’”

 

RECONCILIATION

 

Two weeks ago, I mentioned in this update that one of the potential approaches being considered by the Democrats to break the legislative logjam is to pass all or part of health care reform using the budget reconciliation process, which cannot be filibustered thus requiring only 51 votes to pass the Senate.  Republican leaders have questioned the legitimacy of using reconciliation, threatening political retribution if the Democrats pursue it.

Since that update, I have gotten a number of questions about reconciliation; one frequent query is whether this is an extreme legislative maneuver.  It is actually not the rare and unorthodox procedure that some lawmakers have made it out to be. Reconciliation is a standard budget procedure that Congress engages in nearly every year to make changes in the law required by the annual budget resolution.  For example, if the budget resolution requires savings in Medicaid or directs new spending on children’s health, those changes are regularly made in a separate reconciliation bill.  It makes sense that reconciliation cannot be filibustered because the procedure is used to effectuate what Congress has already directed itself to do in the budget resolution.  In the budget resolution for fiscal year 2010, Congress was directed to achieve budget savings through the enactment of health care reform legislation, which is why Democrats believe that using reconciliation is a legitimate legislative process for passing health reform.

Presidents and Congresses of both political parties have passed many important bills through reconciliation.  The 1986 COBRA legislation, the Clinton welfare reform law, the bill creating the Children’s Health Insurance Program, and the tax cuts authored by President Bush in 2001 and 2003 were all passed via reconciliation.  Having said that, as I mentioned two weeks ago, using this procedure to pass any part of health care reform legislation would not be without controversy.

ACS CAN is urging the President and Congress to enact meaningful health care reform now, not later, and we believe it is their job to figure out how best to get it done.  We neither support nor oppose the use of reconciliation, but feel it is a question our elected leaders must resolve.

GRASSROOTS UPDATE

Last week, ACS CAN began making patch-through calls to targeted Senators, urging them to finish the job on meaningful health care reform.  In the first six days of calling, volunteers completed an astounding 2,049 patch-throughs.  With President Obama’s announcement of the upcoming summit, however, we have decided to hold off on calls until the week after next, when the spotlight will once again be focused squarely on health care reform. In the meantime, volunteers nationwide have scheduled in-district meetings during the upcoming President’s Day Recess, and will reiterate ACS CAN’s call for meaningful health care reform.

ACS CAN is also looking into the idea of a nationwide petition drive later this month that would call on Congress to pass health care reform now, not later.  We’re still working out the fine points, but will have more details for you next week.

 

NEW REPORTS ON HEALTH CARE SPENDING AND COSTS

 

A new government report offers a troubling look at future health care spending in this country, absent health care reform. The report, issued annually by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, shows that spending on health care in America will continue to consume a growing share of total spending nationwide in the next decade or more. The study found that the nation's health care spending grew last year by the largest amount in at least 40 years, and it projects that by 2019, spending on health care in America will grow by $2 trillion and represent 19.3 percent of the economy – nearly one in every five dollars spent by Americans.  Moreover, the government is projected to foot the bill for over half of all health care spending by 2019 because the private insurance system is declining due to the rising health care costs.

 

The report was followed by the announcement that Anthem Blue Cross in California is planning to raise premiums on some policyholders by up to 39 percent this year. This comes as Anthem’s parent company, WellPoint, Inc., and other major insurers earned record profits last year, according to a report released yesterday by the pro-reform group Health Care for America Now. These studies offer compelling evidence that the current health care system is unsustainable and that the status quo is not an option.

 

IN THE STATES

 

As state budget numbers continue to look bleak, cancer screening and treatment programs for the underserved are being hit especially hard. California just announced a halt to the state's Every Women Counts program that screens medically underserved women for breast and cervical cancer. This suspension may be lifted in July, but only if new funding sources are found by the state. Even if the program resumes, women aged 40-50 will no longer be eligible for screening as they were in the past.

 

With the President's budget proposal calling for multi-million dollar cuts to federal funding for the National Breast and Cervical Cancer Screening and Treatment Program for fiscal year 2011, states may also be more likely to cut back on funds they dedicate directly to the program.

 

Additionally, it has recently come to our attention that some states may limit life-saving treatment offered under the National Breast and Cervical Cancer Screening and Treatment Program only to women who are diagnosed in-state. These policies may prevent a woman whose cancer is found through the national screening program from leaving the state where she was diagnosed and getting treatment under the same national program in a different state. ACS CAN is working to ensure that women diagnosed under the national program can receive treatment through the program in other states.

 

As always, thanks for everything you do every day for cancer patients and their families.

Molly Daniels

Interim President

American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network

 



Massachusetts Updates

ACS CAN provides this webpage for the convenience of the American Cancer Society.
Unless specifically noted otherwise, the Society, and not ACS CAN, is conducting the activities described on this page.