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Current News
Updated July 30, 2010
Federal News
MURRAY FMAP, TEACHER JOBS AMENDMENT TO
PASS SENATE; THOUSANDS OF JOBS WILL BE SAVED IN WASHINGTON STATE
Wednesday, August 4, 2010 News
Release from Senator Patty Murray's Office -
Today, U.S. Senator Patty Murray
successfully introduced an amendment that delivered on the FMAP funding that
Washington state expected and needed to avoid a special session of the
legislature, be forced to make drastic cuts to state services, or increase
taxes. Here's a link to
a
video of Senator Murray's speech.
The U.S. Department of
Education, Office for Civil Rights (OCR) has completed its investigation of
OCR Complaint Reference No. 10071116 filed against Shoreline School District
No. 412, on April 11, 2007. Click
here to
read their findings and conclusions.
DPC
Conference Call
August 26,
2010
PowerPoint presentation on health care reform implementation.
Please upload the presentation by clicking on:
http://www.thearc.org/document.doc?id=2662
Health
Care Reform Implementation: This part follows the PowerPoint. I will
fill in with the comments that are made that are not on the PowerPoint by
giving the Title of the page.
ACA
Implementation: There are a lot of reasons for this delay, states need time
to set things up, we needed to get regulations together, the act is really
trying to standardize a lot of terms, there has to be a process to agreeing
what these terms mean, a number of reasons in addition to the obvious one,
when you phase in legislation you spread the cost over time. This is one of
the reasons the legislation gets criticized and may not be as well
understood, because many of the good and wonderful things are down the
road. So it’s important to understand what is happening.
Insurance
Market Reforms Effective September 23, 2010: When they say it is effective
September 23rd they really mean for most part, plan years on or
about this date. If your open enrollment takes effect Oct. 1st
you will be covered by these reforms, if your plan year started Aug. 1st,
then you would not have these reforms until Aug.1, 2011 (question: I
believe that good size list of companies that have agreed to start sooner.
Is that right? There is a healthcare.gov website, if you go there you can
find out everything you need to know. I believe there are 65 companies that
have agreed to start early on the Dependent Care. A list of those companies
can be found on that website. Lifetime Limits: One of our comments to them
was its good that you have to give notice but there is no requirement that
you provide a warning getting close. (question: You said that they could
not deny benefits but can they charge higher premiums? It’s unclear, that
area of comment for the interim final regulations. We are arguing that they
should not be allowed to but it is not prohibited in the regulations)
I guess I
should explain a little about these interim regulations. They were under a
lot of pressure to put out guidance and regulations on all these
provisions. They are all quite complicated because they tie into existing
laws, and so they put out the interim finals and we have an opportunity as
well as the insurance companies and other stakeholders to seek clarification
and expansions and push on different issues. (question: When are the final
regulations going to be out? The interim final is treated as final, the
interim means that they are accepting comments, they will review all
comments and figure out if they are going to make any changes.)
We are
working on another issue of National Policy matter that will go into greater
detail about these provisions and have a little more information, we are
trying to get that wrapped up and out as soon as we can. So this is some of
the highlights of coverage issues.
Medicaid
FMAP and Education: The President signed into law on August 10th
the bill for extension of the FMAP and Education. It was not the full
extension that we had hoped for, it was a smaller extension. On August 18th
CMS sent out letters to all the states, for this extension States must
request the extension. A sample is given on what the States need to do to
qualify for the extension. This must be done by September 24th.
A similar
situation occurs with the 16 billion dollar that they passed on Education.
The money is there, and the Sec. of Education wants to get the money out
immediately, so that schools will have it for the beginning of the school
year. But again States have to ask for the money. This week the Department
of Education announced the dozen or so states that will receive the last of
the Race to the Top money. No state any where close to West of the
Mississippi got any money. We see a cash cliff for schools and Medicaid
when the money runs out. For schools the next school year and for Medicaid
next June. We expect to have a national dialogue about occurs in Medicaid
and Education as well as other programs in the spring.
U.S. Congress: This is the schedule, as we know it for the future. The
long Congressional Recess ends September 14th when they come
back. The expectation is that they will work up to or around October 8th.
The Pre-Election Recess will run to mid November and they will come back
then to do what ever they have to do in a lame-duck session. Following
that, the Thanksgiving Holiday Recess you have a lot of other observance
that are going to make that a short amount of time. After that they will
come back in December for an unknown amount of time. In December, if all
goes according to plan the Deficit Commission will release their
recommendations, what ever they might be, and then Congress is supposed to
vote on those recommendations. Who knows if that is going to be true or
not. I think a lot depends on the results of the election. If the
Republicans have a majority in the House
and Senate then it would be a different circumstance for that.
Even the deficit Hawks could see themselves in charge a month later, and say
we will wait until we are really in charge. On the other hand it might not
happen that way. For one thing we don’t know for sure is that there will be
a second lame-duck session but we highly anticipate it, to clean up work
that needs to be done.
FY 2011
Budget and Appropriations: There may be one Appropriations bill passed
for the beginning of the new fiscal year on October 1. Which means that the
vast majority of the Federal Government will be on automatic pilot through a
Continuing Resolution, which the Congress will have to pass before October
1. It will probably last until November or December for the lame-duck
sessions, and they still won’t get most of the Appropriations bill done, so
they will punt the money decisions to the next Congress. So we can expect
at least two CR that get us into February, March or April of next year. A
little bit of a twist and staying on Health Care, the Obama Administration
asked Congress to amend the Administrations Budget Request for the next
fiscal year. The reason that they are asking for new monies is all around
Health Care Implementation. They figured out that they need more money for
certain things to help implement Health Care Reform. They are asking
Congress to appropriate those funds. Included are $250 million for training
of primary health doctors and other health care workers who deal with
elderly issues, $55 million for states so that they can operate their
high-risk insurance pools, and $30 million for consumer education. In order
for them to ask for this money and not increase the deficit, the
Administration also provides amounts for offsetting cuts. Most of the cuts
would come from money that has been requested to build new buildings, and
another big cut would be for the unspent Pandemic flu monies. Also little
pots of money will be cut. It remains to be seen whether the Congress will
appropriate that money.
Entitlement Commission: Last meeting was on July 28th. They
have three more meetings scheduled with the full commission; they are on
September 29th, November 10th and December 1st,
when they are to have their report. At the last meeting they spent quite a
bit of time talking about Social Security, we are very concerned about that
and we have a action alert pending to celebrate SS 75th
Anniversary by keeping it strong. It is something that we are continuing to
watch very closely, everyone is gearing up, sending letters to the
commission. We have been part of a number of those saying we need to
protect these important social safety net programs and discretionary
programs and that we are extremely concerned about some of the talks that we
are hearing.
Transportation: We had a surprise, the Department of Transportation
opened up the rule-making docket on ADA regulations. There were a couple of
issues controversial, one has to do with level boarding and AMTRACK not
wanting to provide level boarding from platform to train and the other is a
para-transit issue about transit having to modify their policies and
practices. We have always felt they had to, the transit agencies have
reacted like we were creating this owners new burden on them and are
complaining. So the DOT has opened up the docket, had a public meeting and
then they closed the docket yesterday. We do continue to negotiate with
AMTRACK about agreement with a time line and some enforcement issues,
because they have missed their 20 year deadline, to make all their stations
accessible. We are working with them to try and come up with legislation to
hold their feet to the fire. Giving them some extensions but they have to
meet some milestones and make some progress.
Department
of Justice released a proposal about accessibility, they are seeking input
about if they should have ADA guidelines on web accessibility, next
generation 911, movie captions and video description and equipment and
furniture, which would include gym equipment, golf carts, hospital
diagnostic equipment. Should they have asked if they should regulate these
things, how much it would cost, we will be commenting on this and encourage
them to do these regulations.
The Federal
Emergency Management agency announced that it is going to put a Regional
Disability Immigration Specialist in its 10 regional offices.
The
Commission on Children and Disasters voted to submit its report to the
President and Congress, over a hundred recommendations consisting of the
fact the country is not prepared to make sure kids are looked after and that
they are reunited with their families quickly. Recommend that priorities be
given to families with children with disabilities when housing is considered
and evacuation and transportation plans fully address the needs of people
with disabilities. They will be in the CI next week.
Litigation: UCP and The Arc filed amices brief that revolves around P & A
system. We are joining the elder community in this filing. We have
involved itself in another brief around Death Penalty case in Texas. The
person with mental retardation has borderline mental retardation, but his
defense failed to bring up that he had applied for SS. Had they brought
that up it would enhanced his defense on basis of mental retardation, and
now they are fighting if you can’t get a second bite of the apple, second
new defense. Catch 22 in the case of a person who shouldn’t be capable
fully assisting council of the defense.
Regarding
any cuts to employment, whether they are rehab cuts, or Medicaid finance
cuts to the provider, what the impacts of those cuts are. We would love to
have that information a little bit after Labor Day, so that I can organize
that a bit to share the latest information without detailed analyses or
validated what goes on in the states on employment services for people with
developmental disabilities.
Next
calls are
Sept 9 and Sept 23.
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