Week ahead: Slew of healthcare issues await lawmakers

Forget the sequester — with Congress back in town this week, there are a bevy of healthcare events concerning everything from delivery-system reform to global health diplomacy.

The House will start off the week with a hearing Tuesday on Medicare’s benefit structure, hosted by the Ways and Means subcommittee on Health.

Later in the day, the Global Health Technologies Coalition will unveil a report on U.S. investments in global health research at a briefing in the Russell Senate Office Building. Representatives from the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation are scheduled to speak.

In downtown D.C., National Journal and the Partnership for the Future of Medicare are sponsoring an event on Medicare costs and delivery-system reform. Reps. Kurt Schrader (D-Ore.) and Bill Cassidy (R-La.) will speak, along with Mark McClellan, the former Medicare chief.

Wednesday will see two healthcare hearings on Capitol Hill — one at the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee on animal drug user fees, and one at the House Energy and Commerce Health subcommittee on fighting waste, fraud and abuse in federal healthcare programs.

Rare-disease advocates will also come to Capitol Hill Wednesday to lobby against sequestration and regulatory impediments to U.S.-based clinical trials.

On Thursday, the House Ways and Means subcommittee on Human Resources will hold a hearing on the Obama administration’s proposed waivers under the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program, or welfare reform.

The issue was big during the 2012 elections, as Republicans hammered President Obama for “gutting” welfare’s work requirement.

Thursday’s House hearing will continue in that vein, according to Human Resources Chairman Dave Reichert (R-Wash.).

“Work requirements have been the cornerstone of empowering welfare recipients within the TANF program since 1996,” he said last week in a statement. “It is critical for us to review the damaging effects of waiving TANF work requirements, which could result in less work and earnings, and more poverty and government dependence.”

The Senate Finance Committee, meanwhile, will examine delivery-system changes in Medicare and Medicaid as the result of the Affordable Care Act.

Off the Hill, the Kaiser Family Foundation will host a town-hall forum on global health diplomacy with Ambassador Eric Goosby, the U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator.

An Alliance for Health Reform briefing on Medicaid will round out the week on Friday. That event will take place in the Dirksen Senate Office Building.

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