2/6/2009
Congress Starts With A Bang!
New Congresses, coupled with a new Administration, usually take the first three months of the year or more to begin work in earnest, but this year is different. Already, Congress has passed a major reauthorization of the State Children's Health Insurance Program ("SCHIP"), a bill that will lead to millions of uninsured children receiving health care coverage. The SCHIP program covers children whose parents earn too much to qualify for Medicaid but not enough to afford family coverage. In this new group of covered children, there will undoubtedly be a significant number of kids who require orthotic and prosthetic care. This $35 billion expansion in coverage over the next five years is being viewed as a "down payment" on health care reform. The bill was signed February 4th in a White House signing ceremony.
Also consuming Congress' agenda is the Economic Stimulus Package, a massive spending bill that is designed to jumpstart our nation's economy through a combination of tax cuts and spending on everything from roads and bridges to green energy technologies. Included in this massive bill is nearly $200 billion in health care spending including some programs that will have an indirect impact on the O&P profession. For instance, the bill spends $87 billion on Medicaid to help states cope with rising Medicaid costs, $20 billion for health information technology to stimulate the move to electronic medical records, over $6 billion for NIH research (of which O&P research and development should get its fair share), $500 million for vocational rehabilitation which serves as the payor of orthotics and prosthetics on occasion if these devices will help the individual find and hold a job, and a variety of other health care programs.
However, some of this funding is under fire by moderate Republicans and moderate Democrats who believe the overall pricetag of the bill is too high—at last count, the Senate bill exceeded $900 billion dollars, much of which would not reach the economy in time to be considered a stimulus of economic activity. A major trimming of this spending package would be a setback to President Obama, although passage of an overall bill would ultimately accrue to his political benefit. Obama suffered a major loss in momentum in early February with the withdrawl of HHS Secretary-designate Tom Daschle, a former Majority Leader of the Senate and an expert on health system reform. His replacement will take several weeks, if not months, to appoint and will lead to a lack of leadership on health care policy at a time when there is extensive and intense interest in national health care reform.
NAAOP is also busy preparing and lining up support for a number of pieces of legislative specific to the O&P profession that will be the subject of future updates.
Written by Peter W. Thomas, General Counsel, NAAOP
