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Current News 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.
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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