Agenda Progessistes46 Politique USA
Agenda Progessistes46
By Osvaldo Villar
Sen. Robert C. Byrd, the longest-serving senator in U.S. history, died at about 3 a.m. Monday morning. He was hospitalized last week for dehydration but his condition deteriorated over the weekend.
"Byrd’s death, nearly a year after the passing of Sen. Ted Kennedy, represents the end of an era for the Senate," writes POLITICO’s Marty Kady. "If Kennedy was the lion of the Senate and an icon in American politics, Byrd was more of the ultimate Senate insider, leveraging his knowledge of the chamber and his seniority to push legislation that benefited his home state." Obituary http://politi.co/a5zdNm
DRIVING YOUR WEEK – At HHS it’s a sprint to July 1. The agency has two gigantic implementation deadlines on Thursday: establish high risk pools and launch HealthCare.Gov, the new insurance web portal. Both are huge lifts, deadlines that health policy wonks have told PULSE are near impossible. But not completely impossible: All indications point to Sebelius and her team by-and-large pulling off these Herculean tasks on schedule (with a few states falling behind).
PULLING BACK THE CURTAIN – HHS is rushing to hammer out contracts with the 30 states running their own pools. The agency sent a model contract to states last Thursday and spent the past week tweaking and trading versions. Montana and Pennsylvania signed final contracts on Friday; Kansas expects one this morning. Playing middle man in many states’ negotiations is NASCHIP, a trade organization of high risk pools, which assembled a team of state lawyers to pour over the contract.
WHAT STATES WANT – They have pressed HHS for a “fair contract in terms of protecting states so that when they enter into this agreement, they’re not exposing themselves in terms of financial or legal liabilities,” NASCHIP vice-chair Amie Goldman tells PULSE. This plays out in two major ways: 1) States definitely do not want to be held financially responsible for any lawsuits that get filed against the high risk pool. 2) They want clarity that they do not have a financial commitment to run the pool if HHS funds run out. The final contract, state insurance sources tell PULSE, satisfies both requests.
STRAGGLERS – NYT’s Robert Pear: “Some states, like California and New York, are just finishing their proposals.” http://nyti.ms/bsm5z0 … USA Today calls out Michigan, Illinois and (again) California. http://bit.ly/aQYXA3 … And then there’s Utah, which decided to run a pool only last week.
** A message from the Coalition to Protect America’s Health Care: Congress needs to extend the enhanced FMAP now. If Congress doesn’t act, states will be forced to cut Medicaid for millions of low-income children, seniors and Americans with disabilities. America’s banks got a second chance. Don’t America’s families deserve the same? Learn more at www.protecthealthcare.org **
PULSE FIRST LOOK: DON’T RAISE MY TAXES – Americans for Tax Reform are out with an “Obama Tax Hike Exemption Card,” released just prior to the 10 percent tanning tax starting Thursday. The parody card is to be shown to merchants who try to charge a new tax on anyone earning less than $250,000 – those people that Obama said he wouldn’t tax. ATR calls the tanning tax the first Obama pledge violation. “This card is a tangible reminder that Obama has deliberately broken his central campaign promise not to raise any form of taxes on Americans earning less than $250,000,” says ATR’s Grover Norquist. “The last president to break his tax pledge – Bush 41 – served only one term.” The card http://bit.ly/aXq2qM
REPEAL MOMENTUM SLOWING – Congress Daily on an action vs. words Congressional divide: “When it comes to constituent and party leadership cries for repeal of the law, rank-and-file Democrats and Republicans agreed full repeal was unlikely in the near future, and it was better to focus on provisions that could be reformed. Blue Dog Rep. Zack Space of Ohio voted against the law but said now was not the time to roll back the measure. ‘I’m not interested in arguing for or advocating for repeal. That’s a destructive measure, and at this point we need to make the law better,’ said Space.” Missouri Republican Jo Ann Emerson: “As long as President Obama is in office, full repeal isn’t going to happen.” http://bit.ly/bEgn7U
WAIT, THERE’S MORE: MCCOLLUM BACKLASH IN FLA. – Sarasota Tribune-Herald, A1: “Back in March when McCollum announced his plan to sue the federal government to block health care reform, he flatly said it was ‘not his job’ as attorney general to lower health care costs or deal with Florida’s millions of uninsured residents. McCollum promised that he would unveil his own health care proposals. He has not…..McCollum has said little about…health care….Instead he repeatedly said details would come later or he was waiting to hear from advisory groups he has assembled.” http://bit.ly/aTjNfe
KEEP AN EYE ON KAGAN – SCOTUS nominee will almost certainly get a question this week on the constitutionality of health reform; major editorial boards anxiously await her answer. NYT http://nyti.ms/bDkaPf WSJ http://bit.ly/btIPah
FMAP WATCH – Governors are mulling a special trip to Washington to lobby lawmakers on an FMAP extension, says Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm. They’re angry Reid pushed aside the critical funding that the ill-fated tax extenders would have delivered (Reid blames Republicans for blocking the legislation). “The extension of this, during this difficult period as we emerge from the recession, is supported by 47 governors – Republican and Democrat,” she says. Without an extension, Granholm sees some serious scaling back on already infamously poor Medicaid doctor reimbursements.
FMAP WATCH, CONT. – AFSCME/Americans United for Change are out with an ad this weekend hitting Maine Sens. Snowe and Collins for votes against tax extenders. Watch: http://bit.ly/9OrGz8
DOC-FIX WATCH – Frustrated with a six-month patch, medical associations continue to push Congress on Medicare payments. First up: The American Society of Interventional Pain Physicians hits the Hill tomorrow pushing for (what else?) a permanent SGR fix-like the AMA, ASIPP is insistent that nothing less will do, even if it’s not a political reality. Their past president and spokesperson, Dr. David Kloth, tells Pulse: “What the House and Senate passed will get us six months but the bottom line is we need a long term solution or we’re going to lose a lot of doctors.”
PULSE POLITICS: OKLAHOMA INSURANCE COMISSIONER RACE – Insurance commissioner: not a flashy title, but a perch of power in the health reform world. So keep an eye on insurance commissioner races like the one in Oklahoma, where incumbent Kim Holland, a Democrat, defends a seat against a slew of anti-reform Republican challengers gunning to influence health reform. One challenger, John Doak, tells a local paper: “As insurance commissioner, I will vocally oppose socialized health care and government mandated insurance while advocating for association health plans.” http://bit.ly/9HJCPf
YOU SAY PA-PACA, I SAY A.C.A. – At a generally collegial Center for American Progress event on insurance regulation Friday, OCIIO’s Steve Larson and CAP’s David Balto did find one area of contention: what to call the bill. Balto repeatedly called the law “pa-paca” (rhymes with alpaca); Larson told him OCIIO settled on A.C.A. This is a big hole in the name-game theory that one Hill staffer recently floated to PULSE: “pa-paca” was the GOP term for the bill, while Democrats sided squarely with the more proper sounding initials.
BOEHNER PUSHES HYDE EXTENSION – Speaking at the National Right to Life Convention this weekend, Boehner plugged Rep. Chris Smith’s soon-to-be-introduced legislation that would extend the Hyde Amendment (the ban on abortion funding in HHS appropriations) to all federal spending. http://bit.ly/axyRwm
STATE SCAN:
MO. HEALTH REPEAL BALLOT A BUST? AP reports on a hot button issue gone cool in the Show Me State: “Missouri is poised in August to become the first state in the nation to put the new federal health insurance law to a public referendum, [but] barely five weeks before the Aug. 3 election, backers of the Missouri ballot measure are just now beginning to raise money for a coordinated campaign….Opponents of the ballot measure only recently filed a lawsuit seeking to block it, but with no hearing scheduled, it’s unclear whether a judge will rule before the election.” http://bit.ly/cYyTZh
WHAT WE’RE READING:
CONFUSION ON AGE 26 RULE – WaPo: “The administration’s success in convincing dozens of insurers to comply with the provision earlier than the law requires has left many parents with the impression that their adult children will be eligible for continuing coverage far sooner than is likely to be the case, experts said.” http://bit.ly/byMcsm
FIX THE DOC FIX – BU’s Austin Frakt weighs in with a solution: “What should Congress seek in exchange for scrapping the SGR methodology? At the top of my list would be to base some of physician payment on quality improvement. Aligning payment incentives with quality and not quantity will strike at the heart of the cost growth problem. Also high on the list should be reducing payments to specialists and increasing those for primary care physicians.” http://bit.ly/cAnXY2
** A message from the Coalition to Protect America’s Health Care: Congress needs to extend the enhanced FMAP now. If Congress doesn’t act, states will be forced to cut Medicaid for millions of low-income children, seniors and Americans with disabilities.
In a tough economy, Congress did the right thing last year by providing states with additional resources to protect access to health care. But with the expiration date quickly approaching and 47 states facing record budget shortfalls, we need Congress to extend these additional Medicaid funds to the states for another six months. As America moves forward, we can’t leave our most vulnerable behind.
Learn more at www.protecthealthcare.org
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