Mar 26: Health reform means new MOE requirements for states

From Families USA:

Sunday’s historic House vote on health reform legislation (H.R. 3590) has immediate implications for state Medicaid and CHIP programs. States will now be required to maintain eligibility levels for Medicaid through December 31, 2014, or whenever the new health insurance exchange is fully operational. They will also be required to maintain eligibility for children’s coverage in Medicaid and CHIP through September 30, 2019.

Read more details about the Maintenance of Effort (MOE) Requirement here.

Mar 22: YOU DID IT! Health Reform Passes!

Click here for more! Congratulations!

Mar 19: VOTE ON SUNDAY: Call the House today!

Click here for info on how to call the House!

From Families USA:

Don’t let opponents of reform win this fight. Chances like this only come once every couple of decades.

Without this bill, more Americans will continue to lose their health insurance, and some will even lose their lives. That’s why every single one of us needs to call our Representative to get health reform across the finish line.

Call 1-866-922-4970 and tell your Representative to
vote YES on the health reform bill.

Mar 15: Health reform countdown: Email the Blue Dogs

The House vote is coming up! Click here for info on emailing key NC members.

Mar 10: Health reform rally in Raleigh TOMORROW

What: Health Reform Rally

Where: Corner of Fayetteville St. & East Davie St.
300 Fayetteville St.
Raleigh, NC 27601

When: Thursday, March 11th
11:00 a.m. - 1:00 p.m.

Mar 3: New report from Families USA

Check out this new report from Families USA: Lives on the Line: The Deadly Consequences of Delaying Health Care Reform

Feb 16: Cost to NC of doing nothing 

Click here for a NC-specific fact sheet on the costs of passing NO health reform bill.

Feb 8: President announces Health Care Summit

From the Health Policy Hub:

Jan 27: Call the House - NC children still need health reform

Click here for call-in information.

Jan 26: Thoughts on moving forward

From the Health Policy Hub:

"Although the legislative path must be altered, the Brown victory does not prevent Congress from concluding its work along the lines that were negotiated by leadership just prior to election.  Instead of the House amending the Senate bill and sending it back for concurrence, the House can simply pass the Senate bill as is and then send over a package of amendments that can be incorporated via budget reconciliation, a process that requires only a simple majority in the Senate, rather than 60 votes.

That being the case, why have so many—including some prominent House progressives—suggested that the Brown election heralds the death of comprehensive health reform?

The short answer is: the elections’ psychological impact. The Democrats, having recently lost two governorships and with a number of prominent lawmakers facing uncertain electoral prospects in 2010 and now losing what was expected to be an easy race for them, are spooked. To get over the finish line, House leaders must reassure nervous members of their caucus, hold defections to a minimum and still move as many as a dozen members from the No to the Yes column. At the same time, the House and Senate need to finalize agreement on a package of reforms that can meet the technical requirements of a budget reconciliation bill.

Reversing the Curse
While all of this is difficult, it is by no means impossible. And failing to pass major reform legislation (as Five Thirty-Eight and The Treatment have pointed out) is unlikely to improve the electoral prospects of Democrats. Failure also means the continuation of the status quo in health care, with rising premiums forcing more people to go without care or lose coverage entirely, higher rates of medical debt and personal bankruptcy, unchecked increases in federal health spending and an eroding base of paying customers for doctors, hospitals and drug makers (not to mention health insurers who nonetheless continue to oppose reform).

In fact, the only way to blunt political attacks on health care is to actually pass and implement the best possible reform so that voters can see for themselves that the attacks on the bill are baseless and begin to recognize the benefits.

In addition, the alternatives that have been floated—passing an entire bill through budget reconciliation or starting over in negotiation with Republicans—are, as ideas go, also rans for two reasons: Both are time-consuming propositions at a moment when most members are anxious to move on to other issues, and they offer no certainty of either substantive or political success.  With this in mind, a strong grassroots movement to shore up support for reform has helped to stem the initial post-election panic that seemed to first take hold.

While it’s too early to say for certain that the House and Senate will be able to conclude their negotiations with a package that will win the support of 218 House members, it is far too early to count reform out."

Jan 21: Explanation of major parts of any health reform bill

From Congressional Quarterly:

"In an interview Wednesday with ABC News, Obama suggested that Democrats should consider writing and passing a new, slimmed-down health care bill comprising only the most popular “core elements” of the overhaul.

“We know that we need insurance reform, that the health insurance companies are taking advantage of people,” he said. “We know that we have to have some form of cost containment, because if we don’t, then our budgets are going to blow up. And we know that small businesses are going to need help so that they can provide health insurance for their families. Those are the core, some of the core elements of this bill.”

Though the option of drafting a simpler bill is politically appealing and already under discussion, it would not be easy to pull off.

The most popular provision of any of the health care bills is probably a proposal to ban insurance companies from denying people coverage based on pre-existing medical conditions. However, policymakers agree they cannot ban medical underwriting without simultaneously passing a law requiring all Americans to carry health insurance. That is because insurance premiums would likely rise if health plans were forced to cover everyone.

Democrats, furthermore, do not want to require people to purchase insurance without helping poorer Americans pay the premiums. Federal subsidies to pay for coverage are the most expensive piece of the health care bills, costing hundreds of billions of dollars over a decade, and necessitate offsets — typically spending cuts elsewhere in the government, such as in Medicare — and higher taxes.

A bill built around even these four considerations — a ban on medical underwriting, a mandate to buy insurance, new subsidies for the poor and additional revenue to finance the subsidies — would closely resemble the legislation the Senate and House have already passed."
 

Jan 20: MA special election major stumbling block

The irony of Ted Kennedy's seat being the one that loses the filibuster-proof majority in the Senate and imperils health reform is not lost on us this morning. Republican Scott Brown, who campaigned on anti-health reform rhetoric, won the special election in Massachusetts yesterday over Martha Coakley, the Democratic, pro-reform candidate. House and Senate leadership and the Obama Administration will now have to figure out how to move forward. One possibility is convincing the House to adopt the Senate health reform legislation so that the Senate doesn't have to vote on it again. Another is quickly voting on the legislation before Brown is seated. Neither looks particularly likely. In the meantime, here are a couple of NY Times articles on the election and the aftermath:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/20/us/politics/20election.html?th&emc=th

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/20/us/politics/20assess.html?th&emc=th 

Jan 15: Analysis on children in health reform

Children Would Be Better Off Under House Health Bill

The Congressional Budget Office estimates that by 2019, 36 million people who otherwise would be uninsured would gain coverage under the bill, a number that includes millions of children. (CBPP). To read more.

Subsidies in Senate Health Bill Inadequate for Low Income Families In the Senate bill, the premiums and deductibles that many low income families would be charged could squeeze their budgets, leaving them with the difficult choice of paying for health care or paying for other necessities. (CBPP). Click here

Also check out EPI's guide to health reform.

Jan 13: First Focus blog post on Huffington Post

Check out this Huffington blog post from our national partners First Focus, urging protection of children in health care reform.

Don't Gamble With Children's Health

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bruce-lesley/ipeaceful-revolutioni-don_b_421695.html

Jan 12: Protecting children in health reform

As the House and Senate work on a compromise health reform bill, more and more child advocates are sounding the alarm that ending the highly successful SCHIP program and moving children into the proposed Exchanges would leave children worse off. Here are some resources.

From our friends at First Focus:

There has been some recent communication suggesting that it may be somehow okay to repeal CHIP and move kids into the insurance exchanges in either the House or Senate bills.  The following are some links to resources that clearly show that would not be the case.  They include:

·  Two actuarial value studies conducted by Watson Wyatt Worldwide that show that the median value of CHIP is at 100% for coverage at 175% of poverty in a study of 17 state CHIP program and 98% for coverage at 225% of poverty, which is significantly better than what is being offered in the House and Senate insurance exchange plans.  Summaries of the two reports, including state specific information for the 17 states is at: http://www.firstfocus.net/Download/10.1.SUMMARY.pdf and http://www.firstfocus.net/Download/AV_StateSummary.pdf.

·  A white paper released by First Focus entitled "Children in Health Reform: Comparing CHIP to the Exchange Plans" examined children's coverage in CHIP that they would receive in the exchange plans if CHIP were to be eliminated. The report found that on indicators such as covered benefits, out-of-pocket costs, premiums, access to pediatric providers, and the guarantee to care, CHIP coverage is in fact better than the plans proposed in the exchange.

·  An ad by First Focus entitled “If Congress Repeals CHIP, millions of children will get lost in the shuffle” and shows that CHIP is overwhelmingly better than coverage under the insurance exchange plans for children.

·  A chart by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities that shows that there is virtually no cost sharing imposed on children in CHIP programs across the country at http://www.cbpp.org/shsh/copay-child.pdf.  In contrast, the insurance exchanges would have cost sharing imposed on children between at least 7-30% for these same services, depending on the level of poverty for the child.

·  A report showing that having CHIP for kids and a separate exchange plan for adults works very well in Massachusetts and that children are better off in CHIP than if they would be moved into the Massachusetts exchange entitled “Covering Children and their Parents: The Massachusetts Model & Implications for National Health Care Reform.”

·  A series of other reports issues by First Focus, including a variety of papers on health reform issues facing children and polling by Lake Research on the issue at Reports and Research.

·  A comprehensive review about what has happened to children in health reformby the Children’s Defense Fund entitledHow are Children Faring in Health Reform?