Health reform implementation

Republican members of a House health subcommittee tasked with proposing alternatives to the healthcare reform law were named Thursday afternoon.

The nine Republican members of the Ways and Means Committee's Health subcommittee include Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (Wis.) and Rep. Wally Herger (Calif.), who was the subcommittee's ranking member last Congress.

Other subcommittee members include Jim Gerlach (Pa.), Dean Heller (Nev.), Sam Johnson (Texas), Devin Nunes (Calif.), Tom Price (Ga.), Dave Reichert (Wash.) and Peter Roskam (Ill.).

After the GOP votes to repeal the reform law next week, Ways and Means and other key committees will hold hearings on proposals to replace popular healthcare reform measures.

As House Republicans plan to expose what they call flaws in the new healthcare reform law, a key Senate committee announced Thursday afternoon plans to highlight the law's consumer protections.

Starting Jan. 27, the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee will host a series of hearings on how the reform law provides new benefits to consumers.

The first will examine how the law protects consumers against health insurers. The committee also will examine how the law requires insurers to be transparent about rates and spend at least 80 percent of premiums on healthcare services; benefits small business owners; reduces the deficit; increases quality of care; reduces waste, fraud and abuse; invests in prevention and wellness; provides portable insurance; and expands coverage.

House Republicans, including Energy and Committee Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.), have promised to shine a light on the law's weaknesses. They will vote next week to repeal the entire law, and the committees will work to find "common-sense" solutions to replace popular consumer protections included in the reform law.

Groups opposing healthcare reform are urging 13 House Democrats who voted against the reform law to support the repeal bill next week. 

"If you are really against ObamaCare, then you will vote yea for repeal," according to the letter from DeFundIt.org, Americans for Prosperity, Independent Women's Voice and the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons.

Five Democratic "no" votes have already told The Hill they will vote against repeal, with some dismissing the repeal effort as a political stunt. Centrist Democratic Rep. Larry Kissell (N.C.) said he is opposing repeal so Congress can focus on the economy and jobs.

Other Democrats who told The Hill they will vote against repeal include Reps. Stephen Lynch (Mass.), Collin Peterson (Minn.), Daniel Lipinski (Ill.) and Heath Shuler (N.C.).
 
Rep. Dan Boren (D-Okla.) told Fox News earlier this week he will likely vote for repeal, making him the only "no" vote to publicly throw his support behind the Republican bill.

Only 13 of 34 Democrats who voted against the bill remain in Congress. Others include Reps. Jim Matheson (Utah), Mike McIntyre (N.C.), Ben Chandler (Ky.), Jason Altmire (Pa.), John Barrow (Ga.), Tim Holden (Pa.) and Mike Ross (Ark.).

Shane D'Aprile contributed.

House Democrats on Wednesday filed amendments in a bid to force an up-or-down vote on patient protections in the bill.

Federal agency leaders outlined the progress of the new healthcare reform law in a letter to Congress on Wednesday, one week before the House is expected to repeal the overhaul.

In the almost nine months since the reform law was enacted, it is already holding insurance companies more accountable and has provided important consumer protections, according to the letter from Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, Labor Secretary Hilda Solis and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner. The department chiefs, echoing Democratic leaders in Congress, said repealing the law would hurt consumers.

“We urge you to consider all that this law has already done to improve the health and financial security of so many Americans — and what it will mean to hundreds of millions or more in the next several years — as you evaluate any proposal that would set the Nation back on a path to higher costs and skyrocketing premiums, less competition, and fewer consumer protections against industry abuses,” the letter said.

The secretaries pointed to the law’s consumer protections, including allowing young adults to stay on their parents’ insurance until they are 26 years old, new requirements on how much insurers spend on care, coverage for people with pre-existing conditions, reviews on “unreasonable” insurance rate hikes, and more. 

“Thanks to the new law, many of the insurance industry’s worst abuses are history, and other unfair practices are on their way out,” they wrote.

HHS has made an effort to promote the reform law’s consumer protections this week, ahead of next Wednesday’s repeal vote. On Tuesday, the department pushed out state-specific figures of how many people are covered by the reform law’s consumer protections.

The House is expected to repeal the reform law next week, but the measure has little chance of being supported by the Democratic-controlled Senate. A GOP resolution introduced on Monday directed key House committees to draft proposals on how to replace the reform law.

Anti-abortion groups are gearing up to the ensure that Rep. John Boehner (R-Ohio) lives up to his campaign promise to be the most pro-life Speaker in history.

The Susan B. Anthony List on Wednesday announced that it is mobilizing its 280,000 grassroots activists to pressure lawmakers to vote for repeal when it comes up for a House vote next Wednesday. The organization is also pressing the 112th Congress to pass two of its legislative priorities.

The No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act, introduced in July by Reps. Chris Smith (R-N.J.) and Dan Lipinski (D-Ill.), would create a government-wide statutory prohibition on taxpayer funding of abortion. Abortion opponents say the legislation is needed to ensure the healthcare reform law can't cover the cost of abortions.

SBA's other priority is the Title X Abortion Provider Prohibition Act, introduced two years ago by Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.). The bill seeks to ensure that tax dollars are not sent to abortion providers under Title X family-planning grants.

Separately, Americans United for Life President and CEO Charmaine Yoest is attending Boehner's swearing in.

"I predict that we will see changes in President Obama's pro-abortion health care plan and in other pro-life measures as a result of pro-life leadership taking their places in Washington, D.C. today," Yoest said in a statement.

In addition to its federal lobbying, AUL has drafted 38 model bills for state legislators to adopt. They focus on abortion, protection of the unborn, bioethics, end of life issues and rights of conscience for healthcare providers.

Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), who's a top GOP target in 2012, slammed Republican attempts to repeal the healthcare law. 

Speaking to voters at a senior center in Ohio Tuesday, Brown said the looming vote in the House for a full repeal of healthcare is "a colossal waste of time" and that the GOP is "just playing politics."

He told the crowd that no matter what happens in the House when members vote on repeal next week, it won't even get to the Senate floor with Democrats in charge of the upper chamber. 

A recent poll from Democratic-leaning Public Policy firm showed Brown vulnerable, with his approval rating below 40 percent among Ohio voters. The first-term Democrat's support doesn't reach higher than 43 percent in hypothetical match-ups with potential GOP challengers.

Republicans kept the state's other Senate seat in 2010, with Rob Portman (R) replacing retiring Sen. George Voinvich (R-Ohio). The GOP also won the state's governorship.

Despite Brown's perceived vulnerability, though, no Republican has jumped in the race against him -- yet.

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), whose name is near the top of the list of potential challengers among Republican strategists in the state, said last month he is leaning against a run.

Former GOP Sen. Mike DeWine, who is Ohio's newly elected attorney general, also recently ruled out a Senate bid. Other potential GOP candidates include Secretary of State Jon Husted or Lt. Gov. Mary Taylor.

Rep. Dan Lungren (R-Calif.) is expected to re-introduce his effort to repeal the healthcare reform law's 1099 tax provision Wednesday afternoon, making his one of the first bills of the new Congress.

The provision raises $19 billion to pay for healthcare reform by requiring businesses to report all supply purchases of at least $600 or more with one vendor. A Lungren spokesman tells The Hill that the bill should be dropped around 2:30 p.m.

The reporting requirement takes effect in 2012.

Lungren first introduced his bill on April 26, just a month after healthcare reform was signed into law. In September, he introduced a discharge petition to try to force a vote on the issue, but it never reached the 218 signatures needed.

"I feel it is important to keep fighting to repeal this portion of the healthcare bill because it will affect so many local businesses and constituents in my region," Lungren said at the time. "I just completed a busy August work period and as I listened to people all across my district, it became abundantly clear that we must do all we can to help small business entrepreneurs succeed, not hinder them with new tax provisions that smother job growth."

Repealing the provision has the support of the White House, the business community and Democrats and Republicans in both chambers of Congress. But efforts to repeal stalled repeatedly last year because lawmakers couldn't agree on how to pay for it.

Democrats rejected Republican proposals to repeal the provision by cutting funding for prevention efforts or using unobligated federal dollars. And Republicans opposed a Democratic plan to offset the cost with a change to a tax policy that Democrats say encourages multinational companies to ship jobs overseas.

The Lungren bill is not offset with equivalent increased taxes or spending cuts, and the Senate rejected a similar unpaid-for proposal by Finance Committee Chair Max Baucus (D-Mont.) last year. On the flip side, the Lungren bill already has 180 co-sponsors, more than last year, including seven Democrats. 

House Republican leaders have so far not publicly committed to taking up the Lungren bill quickly. Repealing the 1099 provision, however, was a plank in their Pledge to America.

"This 1099 reporting mandate is so overbearing that the IRS ombudsman has determined that the agency is ill-equipped to handle all the resulting paperwork," the pledge states. "We will repeal this job-killing small business mandate."

Rep. Tom Price (Ga.), the new Republican Policy Committee chairman, said Wednesday morning that Republicans can be expected to defund a key healthcare advisory board in the new Congress.

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) created the Independent Payment Advisory Board, which is charged with finding ways to reduce the rapidly growing pace of Medicare spending. More specifically, the board is required to project spending growth and offer proposals for limiting growth when it is too fast.

While the board will begin its work in 2015, Republicans have argued that it will end up making decisions to ration healthcare. In a Wednesday interview with C-SPAN, Price called the board a "rationing entity."

More broadly, Price said, this week's planned vote to repeal the PPACA is "important" because it would fulfill a promise Republicans made to voters. He acknowledged, however, that full repeal is unlikely, and said Republican-led committees would work to achieve a Republican vision of healthcare reform in the new Congress.

As Republicans eye a vote next week to repeal the new healthcare reform law, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) will unveil a detailed outline of national and state-by-state repercussions if repeal succeeds.

HHS will argue that repealing the law would deprive people of popular consumer protections and leave them at the mercy of insurance companies, according to department documents obtained by The Hill. The new HHS data comes as Democratic leaders are centering their defense of the reform law around its consumer protections.

“At a time when American residents will soon be finally free from worrying that affordable coverage will not be available to them and their families when they need it the most, repealing the Affordable Care Act would be devastating,” HHS said in a document detailing repeal's national impact. “American residents, providers, small businesses and other employers would be denied critical new benefits of the law, from protections against insurance industry abuses to new coverage options and millions of dollars in support so the United States can deliver quality, affordable health care options to all of its residents.”

According to the document, repeal would mean: more than 1.2 million young adults under 26 would lose insurance through parents’ health plans; more than 165 million individuals would be subjected to lifetime coverage limits; about 16 million could have their insurance dropped at any moment; 44 million seniors would be forced to pay a co-pay for preventive services; and other protections would be lost.

A separate 138-page HHS document breaks down the figures for each state.

Since lawmakers started returning to Washington on Monday, Democratic leaders have been touting the reform law’s consumer protections. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and top Senate Democrats warned Speaker-designate John Boehner (R-Ohio) that the upper chamber would block efforts to repeal the reform law. On Tuesday, outgoing-Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said the reform law was necessary to fund the new consumer protections.

“If you’re going to have a patient’s bill of rights, you need comprehensive health care reform,” Pelosi said.

Republicans unveiled a two-page bill on Monday to repeal the reform law, as well as a resolution that instructs key committees to propose elements to replace the law.