Healthcare Thursday

MEDICAID, CONTINUED

Supported by Maine GOP Sens. Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe, Senate Democrats on Wednesday advanced their proposal providing $16.1 billion in emergency Medicaid funding to states next year. The 61 to 38 cloture vote sets the stage for final passage Thursday. But the wildcard yesterday was the announcement that House lawmakers will interrupt their August vacation to return to Washington next week to pass the bill.

The urgency was created not on account of the Medicaid funding, which states can't tap until January, but by a $10 billion provision for education programs also contained in the package.

"As millions of children prepare to go back to school — many in just a few days — the House will act quickly to approve this legislation once the Senate votes," Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said in a statement. 

Earlier, she said the choice was made "to save teachers’ jobs."

Republicans aren't so sure. House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) issued a statement arguing that Americans "don’t want more Washington ‘stimulus’ spending — especially in the form of a pay-off to union bosses and liberal special interests."

The House vote is scheduled for next Tuesday.

• The Medicare trustees will issue their annual report Thursday detailing the financial health of the program. Always a well-watched event, this year's report has an added importance: it's the group's first analysis of Medicare's solvency since the new healthcare reform bill became law.

Last year's report gave Medicare's hospital fund (Part A) until 2017 before coffers ran dry. An April analysis by Richard Foster, Medicare's chief actuary, said the new law will extend the life of that fund by 12 years. And what will the trustees say? 

We'll know at 11 this morning. 

IN THE NEWS

• Republicans pounced after Missouri voters on Tuesday voted overwhelmingly against a federal requirement that all Americans buy health insurance by 2014 or face a fine. The vote is symbolic, but nonetheless has put the White House and some Missouri Democrats on the defensive — at least for a day.

• While Congress jousted over the Missouri vote, thousands of uninsured patients waited hours Wednesday to receive free healthcare services just a few blocks from the Capitol — part of a nationwide tour sponsored by the National Association of Free Clinics. 

Every member of Congress was invited to stop in. Only Rep. Donna Edwards (D-Md.) accepted, The Washington Independent reports.

• The federal investigation intensifies into the doping allegations against Lance Armstrong.

OVERHEARD

• Jacob Hacker makes the case for reviving the public option the next time Congress takes up healthcare reform on a grand scale. 

"[R]eformers will need to call plainly for a greater government role — armed … with concrete examples of government getting things right," he writes in The American Prospect. 

"[The public option] is popular. It will save serious money. And it can function as a sword of Damocles: If insurers fail to live up to the obligations of the law and tackle rising costs, they will face the only form of accountability that really matters in the private market — losing customers."

AROUND TOWN

• The Medicare trustees will unveil their annual report at 11 this morning at the Treasury building.

• The Senate Veterans Affairs Committee gathers Thursday to mark up a series of bills related to vets' healthcare. 

• Health Affairs is hosting a panel discussion on providers' transition to electronic health records. 

• The Kaiser Family Foundation on Thursday will host a panel discussion on the international AIDS conference held in Vienna last month.

• The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration meets to examine ways to make kids safer during ambulance rides.