Weekly Newsletter: May 19, 2008
Democrats Advance Provisions to Expand SCHIP to Wealthier Families
This past week, Democrats in both the House and the Senate took actions to block guidance from the Administration that would keep the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) on mission. On Thursday, the House Energy and Commerce Health Subcommittee held a hearing on legislation (HR 5998) that would override guidance issued by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) last August. That guidance is intended to ensure first that individuals with private health insurance do not drop their coverage in order to join a government-funded program, and second that states target their SCHIP funds at the low-income families for whom the program was created before expanding their state health plans to cover children from wealthier families.
That same day, Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) attached legislative provisions mirroring HR 5998 to the wartime supplemental appropriations measure. The provisions were attached along with language similar to a House bill (HR 5613) that would suspend several Medicaid anti-fraud regulations. Sen. Lautenberg’s home state of New Jersey—which extends government-funded health insurance to “low-income” families making over $70,000 for a family of four—is one that has taken legal action against CMS to block the SCHIP guidance.
Some conservatives may be troubled, but not surprised, by the Democrat attempts to ensure that states can expand their SCHIP programs up the income ladder—consistent with legislation that passed the House last year permitting “low-income” families with over $80,000 in income to be added to government rolls. Given that the Administration has clarified the guidance to ensure that no child need be dropped off the SCHIP rolls as a result of the CMS policy, many conservatives would support the Administration’s attempts to keep the SCHIP program targeted on the populations for whom it was created, and oppose Democrat efforts to override these reasonable limits.
An RSC Policy Brief on this issue can be found here.
Ways and Means Hearing Examines HSAs
Last week, the House Ways and Means Health Subcommittee held a hearing analyzing the growth of Health Savings Accounts (HSAs). The Subcommittee heard testimony from the CEO of Alegent Health, a Nebraska-based health system that has implemented consumer-driven health care for its employees.
Since embarking on a consumer-driven model in 2005, Alegent has provided free preventive care and other incentives for healthy behaviors, while increasing price and quality transparency for its employees and patients alike. The results have been impressive: 92% participation by employees in consumer-directed plans, with high contribution rates to HSAs from low-income employees, lower costs, and healthier workers.
Many conservatives may believe that Alegent Health represents a successful model of how the growth of HSAs and consumer-driven health care can reduce rising health care costs. By empowering employees to take control of their lifestyle and health decisions, HSAs can encourage healthy behaviors that will reverse the growth of chronic diseases such as those linked to obesity, while incentivizing workers to accumulate real and portable savings that can be used to pay for health expenses. Some conservatives may believe the testimony at the Ways and Means hearing provided a welcome example of HSAs’ effectiveness, and a reminder why Democrat attempts further to regulate this new form of health care should be viewed with significant caution.
An RSC Policy Brief providing background on HSA enrollment can be found here.
Article of Note: Rationed Care Kills
From the United Kingdom comes a story in the Daily Mail by Sarah Anderson, an ophthalmologist fighting twin battles: to save her father’s life and against Britain’s National Health Service. Her father’s kidney tumor could be treated by a new drug—but while the pharmaceutical has been approved for use in Europe for two years, Britain’s National Institute for Clinical Effectiveness (NICE) will not complete its assessment of the drug’s usefulness until January. Until then, local NHS branches can refuse to provide the drug, leaving Anderson’s family to pay for their father’s treatment on their own, or face the inevitable consequences that will follow if he cannot obtain it.
Some conservatives may be concerned by this story’s cautionary tale, particularly in the context of efforts by Democrats to establish a similar “comparative effectiveness” institute under the aegis of the federal government. Conservatives may not only believe that such an approach would put bureaucrats, and not doctors and patients, at the center of medical policy, but would also result in the types of costly delays and care rationing that put lives at stake.
Anderson’s ultimate verdict on her family’s dilemma is a sobering one with which many conservatives would agree: “If Dad should lose his life to cancer, it would be devastating—but to lose his life to bureaucracy would be far, far worse.”
Read the article here: “How the NHS Is Letting My Father Die”