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Healthcare
Healthcare
I joined a majority in the House of Representatives in support of bipartisan legislation, to provide health care to more than 10 million low-income children. The Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) Reauthorization Act has passed the House twice. These bipartisan bills reauthorized the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) for five years and preserve the coverage for all 6.6 million children currently covered by CHIP nationwide. The bills also extended health care coverage to 3.8 million additional low-income children. The President vetoed both pieces of legislation.
Right now, millions of children in America’s working families can’t see doctors when they should and can’t get medicines when they need them, because their parents just can’t afford costly private insurance. Congress has worked to pass a bill that would give millions of low-income children the chance for good health, but the President continues to veto the legislation.
The Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) was created in 1997 to provide health care coverage for children in families that earn too much to qualify for Medicaid, but not enough to afford private insurance. Since the creation of CHIP, North Carolina has been a national leader in finding and enrolling eligible children. Because of this success, North Carolina has chronically faced shortfalls in federal funding for the program.
Unfortunately, the House has not been able to override the Presidential vetoes. The Omnibus Appropriations Bill 0f 2008 included language that will allow CHIP to continue in its current form until March 31, 2009. House leadership has stated that they will act sooner than this to address state shortfalls and to enroll more low-income children. I will continue to try to ensure that North Carolina has the resources to continue covering the 120,280 children currently enrolled in CHIP and to expand the program to allow more children from low-income families to enroll.
I am committed to ensuring that North Carolina residents continue to have access to high-quality physician care. Making sure that doctors are adequately reimbursed for their services to patients on Medicare, is an essential part of this commitment. We must quickly work to fix problems with Medicare formula for reimbursing physicians, as escalating physician expenses could force doctors to stop treating Medicare patients, resulting in even greater access problems to modern healthcare. Over the last five years, Congress has passed last minute, temporary fixes that either provide a small payment increase, or simply postpone pending cuts. Most recently, Congress stopped a 10% payment cut and replaced it with 0.5% increase. This fix will expire on June 30, 2008.
While I have supported these temporary fixes, I believe Congress must permanently reform the current reimbursement system to accurately reflect the changing cost of providing medical care. I have consistently encouraged House leadership to eliminate the sustainable growth rate and replace it with a new formula. The six month fix was passed with the intention of Congress reexamining the issue early this year, and will pass a long-term fix to the formula. It is my hope, that this will be the case and I will act at every opportunity to ensure that Medicare patients have full access to their physicians.
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is our country’s premier institution for medical research. It embodies our greatest hope for treating and curing debilitating conditions like lung and heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and many other illnesses. It is also our best hope for containing health care costs. A large portion of the projected increase in health care expenditures over the next two decades can be explained by the escalating costs associated with chronic diseases. I have co-signed a bipartisan letter to the appropriators urging a minimum of a 6.5 percent increase for NIH funding. We must invest in research today that will yield cures for tomorrow.
The extraordinary effort to double the investment in NIH has yielded a number of scientific advances that have improved health outcomes. Unfortunately, since the doubling ended in 2003, funding for NIH has failed to keep pace with biomedical inflation and as a result, the NIH has lost a significant amount of its purchasing power. Many of the benefits of doubling will be lost unless Congress continues to provide robust funding for health research.
Last year, Congress overwhelmingly supported legislation authorizing an annual increase in NIH funding for Fiscal Year 2007. In 2007 Congress passed a Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education (LHHS) appropriations bill that would have increased funding for NIH by 4%. Unfortunately, the President vetoed this bill and despite my vote to override his veto, the House did not have the two-thirds vote required to override. The LHHS bill was incorporated into the FY08 Omnibus Appropriations bill. I was disappointed that the Omnibus bill only increased NIH funding by 2 percent.