Incremental Health Fixes Buried in Jobs Bill

Embedded within the draft jobs bill floating through Congress are several health care quick fixes. Most are temporary in nature, holding in place a number of programs until Congress again addresses a more comprehensive health reform package.

Among the fixes are:

• A seven month extension to the Medicare "doc fix" that prevents a 21% cut to physician reimbursements.
• Revising the definition of "hospital based physician" under the HITECH provisions of ARRA ("the stimulus") so as to ensure certain hospital-based physicians qualify for HIT incentive rewards.
  
• Extending payments to 2010 for certain aspects of the Medicare program, such as Part B caps on therapy, and expanded payments for mental health treatment.
• Making technical corrections to reimburse critical access hospitals at 101% of their reasonable costs for specified outpatient services, and to extend various Medicare payments to long-term care hospitals and rural hospitals through 2010.

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Medicare Expansion Faces Challenges

As Senate Democrats consider expanding Medicare, the federal health program for the elderly, as part of a public option compromise, myriad political obstacles stand in their way. First, many Republicans oppose the idea, claiming the slippery slope to a government-run, single-payer system it would spark would be worse than the one a public option would have began. Second, three centrists - Sens. Joe Lieberman (I-CT), Ben Nelson (D-NE), and Olympia Snowe (R-ME) have voiced their opposition to the plan that would expand coverage, through a buy-in mechanism, to those between the ages of 55 and 64.

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Health Reform - EBRI Facts on Benefit Issues

Employee Benefit Research Institute has, on its website, a brief on "Facts on Benefits Issues" to help educate the public about many of the statistics used in the health reform debate.

The topics covered:

• the uninsured,
  
• coverage trends,
  
• factors affecting coverage,
• public opinion: health care costs,
• Medicare, and
  
• tax treatment of health care benefits

Also included is a section on various retirement issues that may be affected by reform legislation.

All answers are derived from studies conducted by EBRI, a nonpartisan research organization that does not lobby and does not take positions on policy issues.

The brief can be found at http://www.ebri.org/campaign/.