Federal Update 11

October 7, 2009

CONGRESSIONAL DEVELOPMENTS

Health Care Reform Continues to Dominate the Agenda

The Senate Finance Committee nearly completed work on its health care reform bill -- America's Health Future Act -- last week. Chairman Max Baucus agreed to postpone a vote on final passage until the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) is able to score the measure and provide the results to the committee members to review, which should occur this week. The vote on final passage is very likely to occur this week. The text of the committee bill may be accessed here.

A Medicare Physician Payment amendment, important to IU and other schools of medicine, was offered and rejected during the Finance Committee markup. The amendment would have extended by two years the single year of physician payment relief (.5 percent update in 2010) which is part of the underlying bill. The amendment was defeated, although Chairman Baucus stated at the time that the physician payment formula problem would be resolved as part of health care reform. For the IU School of Medicine, it is vital that Medicare physician payment updates produce positive returns for teaching physicians.

If the Finance Committee, as expected, reports out the measure, it will be merged with the health care reform legislation approved this past summer by the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee (HELP). A summary of that bill may be found here. Consideration of the merged bill by the full Senate should begin the week of October 12.

On the other side of Capitol Hill, the House Rules Committee is moving ahead with fusing the measures reported out of three House committees -- Ways and Means, Energy and Commerce, and Education and Labor -- into one bill. When that measure will be ready for floor action is uncertain. Rumors abound that the House bill that emerges from Rules will resemble the measure reported out of Senate Finance so that the House-Senate conference committee will be able to fully resolve whatever differences there are in the two measures. However, it is a good bet that the House bill will include three things unlikely to be found in the Senate version: a public option, a "tax" on the wealthiest of Americans and a requirement that employers offer some form of health insurance to employees. Considerable hurdles remain in forging one bill that will be acceptable to President Obama.