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WASHINGTON – On Wednesday the House of Representatives passed the Children's Health and Medicare Protection Act of 2007 (The CHAMP Act, HR 3162).
This historic legislation reauthorizes the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), which provides health insurance coverage for millions of children in working families with incomes slightly too high to qualify for Medicaid.
The CHAMP Act also includes important Medicare provisions, which benefit providers and beneficiaries alike.
"Keeping kids healthy today means that the government will inherit a healthier Medicare population tomorrow," said Congressman Mike Thompson. "Investments in our children are both common sense and cost-effective."
The CHAMP Act maintains current SCHIP eligibility requirements, but it provides states with the resources needed for outreach to eligible children not yet enrolled in the program. As a result, five million new children will be able to obtain health care.
The bill also makes critical changes to the Medicare program. Without this legislation, physician reimbursement rates would be slashed by 10 percent next year, and by an additional 5 percent in 2009.
"This legislation will provide five million new kids with healthcare and millions of children already in the SCHIP program will keep their benefits," added Thompson. "With this legislation, physicians will avoid the biggest rate cut in the history of the Medicare program, which would have triggered a mass exodus of doctors from Medicare. Today, Congress took an historic step and dramatically improved healthcare for millions of Americans."
The CHAMP Act also expands preventive healthcare available to Medicare beneficiaries, and it provides critical new funding for rural healthcare.
"For many reasons, it's much harder for seniors in rural areas to access high-quality healthcare than it is for their urban counterparts," said Thompson. "This bill extends key bonus payments for rural providers, ensuring that doctors, ambulances, home health agencies and other providers will keep their doors open in rural communities like ours."
Thompson also noted that the CHAMP Act does not increase the deficit. Consistent with the Democratic Majority's commitment to Pay-As-You-Go rules, of which Thompson is a long-time advocate, the CHAMP Act is fully funded.
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After receiving numerous requests from Lake County citizens, theater manager Justin Hamaker said in an announcement Tuesday, "The only way we could accommodate Sicko was to bring it in for a single matinée showing each day at 12:15 p.m.," which he realizes is not an ideal time for everyone, but his only other option was not to show it at all.
Sicko is currently playing in Ukiah until Thursday, Aug. 2.
Michael Moore's latest documentary is bringing people from all political affiliations, backgrounds and beliefs together around the crisis of health insurance in the United States.
Susan Carson, a recently retired family physician, said in an article published by the Capital Times, a Madison, WI-based newspaper, that nationally, one in six people have no health insurance at all. "None of us have adequate health insurance," she said.
Half of personal bankruptcies have to do with health care bills, said Carson, who is active with Physicians for a National Health Program, a nonprofit group of 14,000 physicians, medical students and health professionals who support a single-payer national health system, the Capital Times reported.
In the current U.S. system, there are thousands of different health care organizations, Health Maintenance Organizations (HMOs) and billing agencies. With so many different payers of health care fees, there's an enormous amount of administrative waste, the Capital Times reported.
"The only way to control costs in a for-profit system is to not provide care," Carson said.
Since 1970, the number of health administrators increased by 2,500 percent, she said. Of every dollar spent on health care, 31 cents goes to administrative costs, Carson said in the Capital Times article.
"There are currently 700 health policies in Wisconsin. As a doctor, I could not cope with this," she told the Capital Times. "People would ask me, Is this covered? Is this not covered? I would tell them they had to call their insurance company and ask."
In California, SB 840, The California Health Insurance Reliability Act authored by Sen. Sheila James Kuehl (D-CA), proposes to provide a fiscally sound, single-payer health insurance coverage to all Californians, provide every Californian the right to choose his or her own physician and control
health cost inflation.
"Single payer" is a type of financing system that has one entity acting as administrator, or "payer." A single-payer system would be set up with a government-run entity collecting all health care fees and paying for all health care costs according to the Capital Times.
District 1 Assembly Member Patty Berg (D-CA) and District 2 Senator Patricia Wiggins (D-CA) are coauthors of the bill.
SB 840 also proposes that eligibility for coverage be based on residency, instead of on employment or income. Income being a factor determining if you can pay for a health insurance policy for you and your family if you are self employed or unemployed.
According to Kuehl, SB 840 will eliminate waste by consolidating the functions of many insurance companies into one comprehensive insurance plan, saving the state and consumers billions of dollars each year.
Currently it's estimated that half of every dollar spent on health care is squandered on clinical and administrative waste, insurance company profits and overpriced pharmaceuticals, according to Kuehl.
SB 840 was re-referred to the Appropriations Committee on July 10.
According to a 2004 report by the Institute of Medicine, "lack of health insurance causes roughly 18,000 unnecessary deaths every year in the United States. Although America leads the world in spending on health care, it is the only wealthy, industrialized nation that does not ensure that all citizens have coverage," which is what Moore's documentary is all about.
For more information, visit the following sites.
www.healthcareforall.org/factsheet.pdf
www.cinemablend.com/new/Sicko-Spurs-Audiences-Into-Action-5639.html
E-mail Terre Logsdon at
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