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1-15-10 This Week in Health Care Reform

ON CAPITOL HILL

House and Senate Leaders have continued intense negotiations to merge their two bills over the past week, with several media reports indicating that significant progress is being made.  Just yesterday, a deal was reached on the proposed tax on high-value plans (so called “Cadillac plans”).  While ACS CAN does not have a position on this issue, we have continued to meet with key leaders on the Hill to advocate for the provisions we  care about most: emphasizing prevention; guaranteeing quality, affordable coverage regardless of pre-existing conditions; reducing the cost burden on families; eliminating lifetime coverage limits; covering routine health costs for those who enroll in clinical trials; and emphasizing patients’ quality of life.

To that end, we sent a letter to Majority Leader Reid and Speaker Pelosi on Monday urging specific refinements to the final bill that would significantly benefit people with cancer and others with serious medical conditions.  The letter outlines several of the provisions that differ between the two bills and advocates for the position that would better serve cancer patients and their families. We also continue our media outreach efforts to highlight the needs of people with cancer. Today, the Associated Press published a national story quoting Steve Finan, ACS CAN’s senior director of policy, about the current two-year waiting period for disabled people without health insurance to get into Medicare.

 

The next, possibly final, iteration of the bill language could be released as soon as next week, and the Congressional Budget Office could take up to two weeks to score the bill before final votes can be taken. 

As you’ve no doubt seen in the news, much of the public debate over the past two weeks has also focused on the ‘ping-pong’ approach that will be used to reconcile the bills.  While opponents of the bill have protested this strategy, the fact is that a formal conference is not used nearly as often as many people think.  The ‘ping-pong’ method is actually used to reconcile the majority of bills on the Hill; notable recent examples include the FDA and SCHIP legislation passed in 2009. 

IMPLEMENTATION

Passage of health care reform isn’t the beginning of the end, but the end of the beginning.  The process of educating staff and volunteers on implementation will begin within weeks of final passage of a bill and will incorporate critical implementation milestones, as well as identify work that will need to be done at the state level, and other initial steps.  Jeff Martin, ACS CAN's director of advocacy training, will lead this effort for ACS CAN; working with other staff from the state and local, policy, federal, communications, and grassroots teams, we will work with Divisions and NHO to ensure a comprehensive approach to health care reform implementation.

For more information about our work in support of health care reform, visit acscan.org/healthcare or contact Erin O'Neill, senior director for grassroots, at Erin.ONeill@cancer.org

 

As always, thanks for all you every day for those touched by cancer.

 

Molly

 

 

 

 

 

 



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