Healthcare

ObamaCare champions made many promises during debate about the law—such as that it wouldn’t add to the deficit and Americans who like their health insurance would get to keep it—which have since been broken. But there’s one promise the Administration can and should keep: the promise made to help people with pre-existing conditions.

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During the last three decades, the biopharmaceutical industry has invested significantly in new and improved vaccines. The results have provided remarkable new ways to prevent cases of cervical cancer, meningitis, pneumonia, pandemic influenza, and rotavirus diseases.
 
The collaborative efforts of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), World Health Organization (WHO), national governments and industry have led to major progress in addressing global immunization goals and reducing illness and death due to vaccine-preventable diseases.

Wikipedia changed the way we look up ideas. GPS revolutionized how we get from point A to point B.  Digital cameras transformed photography. What if new technology could do the same for tobacco? It could, if industry and government regulators were willing to reexamine their long held beliefs about tobacco harm reduction.

For too many years, tobacco policy has been mired in an all-or-nothing philosophy. Under this approach, smokers were presented with just one alternative: quit. This mindset, however, has led to a destructive debate that has prevented the implementation of a comprehensive public health strategy designed to reduce tobacco-related disease.

The Obama administration recently announced that later this year negotiations will start for a Transatlantic trade and investment agreement with the European Union. This move anticipates the completion of the Transpacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA) negotiations this fall. In the coming weeks, the administration will be asking Congress for trade promotion – or “fast track” - authority to cover both treaties.

The TPPA has been touted as the model trade agreement for the 21st century, and the U.S. hopes that it will serve as a rough draft for the Atlantic treaty. Eleven countries are involved, with others in the pipeline, and it will be the largest trading regime in the world save the WTO. It also seeks to liberalize trade in new and significant ways, giving foreign corporate investors unprecedented rights and protections. It has been described as “NAFTA on steroids.”

Three years to the day after President Obama signed into law his massive healthcare overhaul, the Senate overwhelmingly approved a measure to repeal two provisions limiting families’ freedoms. For a brief moment in Washington, politics took a back seat, and the needs of nearly 33 million Americans were addressed.
 
These families, who take the initiative to budget for their healthcare expenses using flexible spending accounts (FSAs) or health savings accounts (HSAs), were some of the first to feel the impacts of the president’s health law. It requires them to obtain a doctor’s prescription to purchase over-the-counter (OTC) medications with their own money set aside specifically to cover health-related expenses. Beginning this year, it places a $2,500 cap on FSA contributions, limiting families’ abilities to use specialized accounts to pay for medical expenses sometimes not covered by health insurance.

When it comes to health care there are many challenges and chief among them is cost. In 2009, Congress and the nation engaged in a broad debate about the direction of federal healthcare reform. On our side of the aisle, we warned that not enough attention was being paid to affordability and too much focus went into expanding federal control. We all know how the story unfolded from there. Those warnings fell on deaf ears, and the president followed the partisan path to health reform.

Wednesday, Gov. Bill Haslam (R-Tenn.) announced that the state of Tennessee would not expand Medicaid as envisioned by President Obama under the Affordable Care Act. The federal government’s insistence on a one-size-fits-all approach under Medicaid is a poor solution for solving our health insurance access problems, especially given the access problems so many of our citizens already face under this program. The governor’s preferred approach – to use federal dollars to expand Tennesseans’ access to private coverage – seems like it may be a better solution for access to health insurance, and it seems to me he deserves an opportunity to put this plan to the test.

“Sequestration” has forced the National Institutes of Health – the leading funder of biomedical research – to halt or cut funding to thousands of potentially groundbreaking research projects. On the 10th Anniversary of the completion of the Human Genome Project, we can’t let the ongoing tug-of-war in Congress over spending priorities threaten the revolutionary work that is taking place in medical science. Quite the opposite, recent advances in science and medicine have the potential to reduce healthcare’s drain on the federal budget and spur economic growth.

Throughout my tenure in the U.S. House of Representatives and on the Committee on Appropriations, I have had the opportunity to help shape U.S. development assistance. And I am proud of the United States’ leadership in providing support and funding for critical global health initiatives that both save lives and strengthen our position in the world. While we have made incredible gains over the years, there is still more to be done and I am committed to ensuring the U.S. continues to reach those most in need.

There appear to be a few glimmers of constructive activity in Washington, D.C. Last week, the Senate moved the ball forward on an issue that is extremely important to innovation and jobs in the United States. By passing an amendment to repeal the medical device tax by an overwhelming 79-20 votes, the Senate has done the right thing for patients and the U.S. economy.
 
The United States Senate has now joined a bipartisan majority of the House of Representatives calling to repeal the 2.3 percent medical device excise tax that has already damaged the U.S. economy and claimed thousands of jobs.