Healthcare providers still weary from the most recent drawn-out budget battle in Washington could have the next fiscal fight on their hands sooner than they think.
Experts have warned that it's the next round of deficit-reduction negotiations that the healthcare industry should be worried about, and it could hit providers in a couple of ways. Federal lawmakers must tackle the sequester, the automatic spending cuts that Congress postponed for two months in last week's fiscal-cliff legislation. (Medicare providers would not have seen their cuts kick in until early February, according to the Congressional Budget Office).
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Here's to diving below the overheated healthcare rhetoric.
It's widely assumed that tonight's vice presidential debate will be a health policy wonkfest (with zingers) that submerges deeply into the numerous conflicting approaches of the two presidential tickets. Specifically, the debate likely will focus on Medicare due to the significant changes the Obama administration has made to the program and because of the overhaul proposed by the Romney-Ryan ticket.
But there are a couple health policy questions that each campaign has rarely addressed that could give some insight and move beyond the rhetoric of which side is “ending Medicare as we know it.”
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Just as truth is the first casualty of war, policy nuance dies quickly in political combat.
The latest example of that was seen in the healthcare firefight over emergency department use and the Massachusetts healthcare overhaul.
Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney got things started when he was asked in a Sept. 23 “60 Minutes” interview about any government responsibility to provide healthcare. Romney responded that “different states have different ways of doing that,” including care through clinics, emergency departments and “a solution that worked for my state.”
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Fifty shades of Medicare.
The addition of Paul Ryan to the Republican presidential ticket has led President Barack Obama to expand his Medicare focus on the stump. But his Medicare comments include an unexpected twist.
Conventional wisdom in Washington was that the selection of Ryan, chairman of the Budget Committee and author of two budget blueprints that would add an insurance subsidy component to Medicare, would open the Republican ticket to charges of trying to undermine Medicare. The healthcare program for seniors is traditionally a third-rail issue in Washington that politicians from both parties have studiously avoided. And now, Mitt Romney appeared to be following Ryan right onto the tracks.
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A week from today, the Republican National Committee will begin its four-day pep rally in Tampa, Fla. to nominate Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan as the GOP's candidates for president and vice president.
I'll be there with Gregg Blesch, Modern Healthcare's news editor, to bring you the week's healthcare-related news. Gregg will also join my colleague Rich Daly from Sept. 3-6 in Charlotte, N.C., to cover the Democratic National Convention.
This year, the GOP chose “A Better Future” as its theme, and the party is promoting a “Convention Without Walls” approach for the week, complete with mobile apps where users can receive live updates and video from the convention floor at the Tampa Bay Forum. Today the RNC released its schedule for the convention's first day, which will include remarks that night from House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), Republican Gov. Rick Scott of Florida, and former Republican Gov. Mike Huckabee of Arkansas. And when is the last time you heard anything about the Oak Ridge Boys? They'll be singing the National Anthem next Monday afternoon.
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The ever-growing shadow of the Nov. 6 presidential election officially reached HHS yesterday. In a call with reporters announcing what amounts to a nationwide campaign to get pharmacies to distribute pamphlets outlining new ACA-created Medicare benefits, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius took a little political detour.
Following a familiar litany of the various popular provisions of the 2010 healthcare overhaul, Sebelius launched into an aggressive attack on the Medicare changes included in the last two House-passed budgets and authored by newly named Republican vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan.
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GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney's choice of Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) as his running mate sent a clear signal that Medicare will be a major issue in this presidential election, and President Barack Obama's remarks Sunday indicate he got the message.
Ryan, the 42-year-old chairman of the powerful House Budget Committee, is the chief architect of a budget plan that made headlines in 2011 and 2012 for proposing a massive overhaul to the Medicare program. Any other choice for a vice president would not have nearly the same effect on healthcare policy issues as the Wisconsin Republican who recommends a premium support model—in which federal payments are made to health plans that consumers choose—to save the Medicare program. Ryan’s 2012 budget proposal differs from last year’s plan because it would give consumers a choice between premium support and the traditional Medicare program.
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The usually apolitical artistic sequence featured in the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games turned some heads among Washington policy wonks, this year.
Julie Barnes, director of health policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center, described some surprise about the sequence that lavished praise on the British National Health Service, during her opening remarks this week at a Washington health policy gathering on “Our Health Care Future: What's Next After the Supreme Court Decision?”
“It was a little surprising; a little different,” the former acting director of the health policy program at the liberal New America Foundation said.
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With the November congressional and presidential elections a little more than three months away, provider advocates have ramped up their campaign giving—with one notable exception.
Provider political action committees already have taken in and distributed millions of dollars to both incumbents and challengers, but the largest such provider group—run by the American Hospital Association—has spent less than half of the money it has collected from members in the current election cycle.
The AHA PAC collected $3,140,010 by the end of June but spent only $1,318,569, according to the political campaign contribution tracking site OpenSecrets.org.
The American Health Care Association PAC actually has spent more than AHA, even though it has collected only about half as much: $1,658,281.
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As Congress' five-week summer recess approaches, it remains uncertain whether lawmakers will act on an HHS appropriations bill for next year.
Last week, the House Appropriations Committee's Labor, Health and Human Services, Education and Related Agencies subcommittee voted 8-6 to pass the full committee's fiscal 2013 spending bill for the HHS, Labor and Education departments that includes $68.3 billion for HHS. The legislation would also defund the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and end HHS' Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality as of Oct. 1.
But it's unclear when—or if—that bill will move beyond its passage at the subcommittee level. In a statement Monday, Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), ranking minority member on the subcommittee, released a statement that said the bill cuts $6.8 billion from last year's budget and will result in “obliterating” programs that provide healthcare, educate children, prevent the spread of disease and make sure seniors receive Social Security in a timely manner. DeLauro also accused her Republican colleagues of trying to hide their plans to cut these programs by not having a broader public discussion of the bill.
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As Congress' five-week summer recess approaches, it remains uncertain whether lawmakers will act on an HHS appropriations bill for next year.
Last week, the House Appropriations Committee's Labor, Health and Human Services, Education and Related Agencies subcommittee voted 8-6 to pass the full committee's fiscal 2013 spending bill for the HHS, Labor and Education departments that includes $68.3 billion for HHS. The legislation would also defund the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and end HHS' Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality as of Oct. 1.
But it's unclear when—or if—that bill will move beyond its passage at the subcommittee level. In a statement Monday, Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), ranking minority member on the subcommittee, released a statement that said the bill cuts $6.8 billion from last year's budget and will result in “obliterating” programs that provide healthcare, educate children, prevent the spread of disease and make sure seniors receive Social Security in a timely manner. DeLauro also accused her Republican colleagues of trying to hide their plans to cut these programs by not having a broader public discussion of the bill.
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