THURSDAY NIGHT IS HEALTH CARE CHANGE NIGHT, a weekly Daily Kos Health Care Series
HOT OFF THE PRESS: Senator Jeff Bingaman's office (D-NM) just called ten minutes ago to inform me that the Senator HAS included all provisions of the moratorium on Medicaid Rules in the supplemental funding bill on Iraq. The president may still shut down public hospitals, emergency rooms, teaching hospitals and school based health clinics as planned, but he'll have to pause the war to do it!
Let's see if he vetoes! More to come under the rainbow (i.e., fold).
I have previously diaried attempts by Bushco to secretly gut our public health safety net through a set of hard-to-understand rules changes, along with the efforts of Senator Bingaman, Representative John Dingell (D-MI) and others to stop him. If implemented May 25 as planned, the rules will severely reduce federal subsidies to public hospitals, indigent hospital care, emergency rooms, clinics, school-based health, graduate medical education, case management, rehabilitation, and children's Medicaid enrollment, causing providers to close their doors. I even flew to DC with a few other health care activists, convincing a McClatchy editor to cover the story, and got some help from a professional I met on the web to film a YouTube documentary to alert the public! Other bloggers took up the cause, began calling their Congresscritters and voila! HR 5613, The "Protect Our Medicaid Safety Net Act" was born!
I have previously diaried our mutual efforts to prevent these rules from going into effect. The moratorium on the evil rules goes before the full Senate this week. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), Charles Grassley (R-IA), and administration officials have vowed to kill the moratorium.
Today, we have made another leap forward. A bi-partisan team of Senators lead by Senator Jeff Bingaman has succeeded in placing a moratorium on all provisions of the offensive rules into the Supplemental funding bill for Iraq.
"Many of us in Congress are trying to extend health care to the millions of Americans who don’t have it. These regulations would have done a lot of harm to an already fragile health care system," said Bingaman. "The provision included in this bill will help ensure New Mexico’s most vulnerable residents continue to have access to life-saving care."
Potential impacts of the proposed combined rules changes include: leaving huge swaths of rural America and low income urban communities without trauma coverage; failing to train our next generation of physicians by forcing teaching hospitals to close their doors; severly limiting case management for the most vulnerable clients; limiting children's access to primary care through the closure of school-based clinics; cessation of new Medicaid enrollment efforts for children; and restrictions on access to rehabilitation services to victims of trauma, stroke and brain injury including vets.
According to a report by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chaired by Henry Waxman (D-CA), the proposed cuts in Medicaid payments to hospitals will reduce America's ability to respond to a disaster or terrorist attack. The report projects increasing strain to urban trauma centers most capable of responding to mass casualties in cities at highest risk for attack. Hospitals with Level 1 trauma centers could on average lose $27 million per year, or 5 percent of their budget, as a result of the three regulations targetting hospitals, according to the report.
The Oversight and Government Reform report surveyed hospitals with Level 1 trauma centers in New York, Los Angeles, Washington, Chicago, and Houston. It found that as of late March, hospitals with Level 1 trauma centers in the five cities were operating above capacity. Washington was the most overburdened. Its two Level 1 trauma centers were 214 percent over capacity. The report also looked at Level 1 trauma centers at the sites of the upcoming Democratic and Republican national conventions in Denver and Minneapolis. These cities' facilities were near capacity at 92 percent and 91 percent, respectively.
Severe cuts to emergency services in these hospitals would leave the US open to terrorist attacks at critical moments!
After an energetic and highly successful campaign by activists to draw public attention to the impact of these rules changes on communities across America, Representative John Dingell (D-MI) Sponsored HR 5613, the "Protect Our Medicaid Safety Net Act" which CLEARED THE HOUSE FLOOR WITH A VETO-PROOF MAJORITY 349-62! Despite blustery veto threats, one hundred-twenty eight Republicans and all voting Democrats voted for the bill. Only 20 representatives abstained.
CongressDaily reports:
Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, who supports the moratorium, said the strong House vote will make it difficult for some senators to vote against it. "It is going to have major consequences for so many groups, special [education], disabled children, seniors. I mean, you go on, people who are just in desperate circumstances," she said. "It would be interesting what the dynamics would be over here."
The administration responded to Waxman's report, and to the possibility that their threats to veto the Senate version of the moratorium might be ignored, by offering a nefarious "compromise." The administration would withold a veto if the Senate agreed to pass a temporary two or three month moratorium on those rules directly impacting hospitals, while allowing rules targeting school-based clinics, case management and rehabilitation to go into effect. Once the conventions had passed, the rules pertaining to hospitals would go into effect as well.
Mass casualties are fine and dandy as long as they take place AFTER the conventions! Kids, old people and wounded vets can go to Hell!
Senators Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and Charles Grassley (R-IA), have taken up the charge to block Senate efforts to preserve our health care system. "It is an absolute farce for anyone to argue that all of those [Medicaid] dollars are being appropriately spent and that Congress ought to just walk away from these issues," Grassley said in a recent speech. He said the Finance Committee should fix the problems "instead of just making the regulations go away."
Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid (D-NV) initially attempted to fast track a Senate version of HR 5613, bypassing Senate Finance (with the blessing of its chair, Max Baucus D-MT), and bringing it directly to the Senate floor. However, many Senators received a memo from Republican Leadership urging opposition to the legislation. I guess it's extremely important to the Bush legacy that he DESTROY public health infrastructure before leaving office!
Senate Democrats are now working to attach wording about a moratorium to the Iraq Funding Bill which is likely to be taken up by the Senate on Thursday of this week.
Please call your Senator today, and express your support for efforts to impose a one year moratorium on new Medicaid Rules changes.