CQ’s Carey Discusses Medicare Physician Payment Cuts, Labor-HHS-Education Bill, Health Information Technology Legislation

Mary Agnes Carey, associate editor of CQ HealthBeat, discusses Congress' failure to approve legislation to stop a Medicare physician payment cut, a Senate panel's approval of the Labor-HHS-Education appropriations bill and House committee's approval of health information technology legislation in this week's "Health on the Hill from kaisernetwork.org and CQ."

According to Carey, the House approved by a veto-proof majority legislation that would delay a scheduled 10.6% reduction to Medicare physician fees, but Senate Democrats fell one vote short of the 60 votes needed to gain cloture. Many Republicans and the White House objected to provisions in the bill that would decrease payments to Medicare Advantage plans. However, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said he will bring the bill back to the Senate floor after the July 4 recess.

In addition, Carey says a Senate panel has approved a fiscal year 2009 Labor-HHS-Education spending bill that includes $7.7 billion more in discretionary spending than President Bush requested. The measure would provide $30 billion for NIH, more than $6.5 billion for CDC and $2.2 billion for community health centers. The White House likely will not support the measure because Bush has said he would veto any spending bill that exceeds his budget request. Another provision of the spending bill that the Bush administration is expected to oppose would nullify a policy directive that would restrict states' abilities to expand SCHIP, according to Carey. The House Appropriations Committee was supposed to debate the bill, but a disagreement arose over another spending issue. It is unclear whether the House will resume its discussion after the recess, Carey says.

Carey also discusses a House subcommittee's approval of a bill that would authorize $575 million over five years in grants and loans to help physicians adopt health IT, particularly those in small practices and rural areas. The bill also would call for the adoption of national standards to allow health care providers to exchange patient information and would strengthen federal privacy protections and expand them to cover new entities that store electronic health information. Some Republicans expressed concern that the privacy provisions in the bill were too strict, according to Carey.

Finally, Carey discusses two other measures that were pending before the recess. She says that Congress approved the war supplemental spending bill, which includes a provision that would delay six new Medicaid regulations. Bush is expected to sign the bill. Meanwhile, a group of Senate Republicans blocked passage of the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, which would have authorized $50 billion over five years to treat HIV/AIDS and other diseases abroad. Reid said he would try to move the bill after the recess.

The complete audio version of "Health on the Hill," transcript and resources for further research are available online at kaisernetwork.org.