Senate Passes Grassley, Bennet, Murkowski, Moran Bill to Help Rural Hospitals in Sparsely Populated States
WASHINGTON – The Senate this week passed bipartisan legislation from Sens. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, Michael Bennet of Colorado, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Jerry Moran of Kansas and fellow senators to extend a Medicare demonstration program that helps rural hospitals in sparsely populated states keep their doors open.
“By extending the demonstration for five more years, this bill allows medium-sized Iowa hospitals participating in the demonstration to continue to seek out opportunities to expand and improve health services needed in their rural communities,” Grassley said.
“This demonstration has helped several hospitals in Colorado’s rural communities, like Delta County, Steamboat Springs, and Sterling, continue to serve their communities,” Bennet said. “This bill will help maintain access to critical health care services in these rural areas.”
“This Rural Community Hospital Demonstration Program has helped Alaskans in Soldotna, Juneau and Sitka,” Murkowski said. “It’s important we give these facilities a bit more time to provide care trying a different financial approach and seeing how it works for our smaller communities.”
“Making certain Kansans have access to quality health care in their home communities is one of my top priorities,” Moran said. “To preserve medical access for Kansans and strengthen rural communities, health care professionals must receive appropriate reimbursement for the care they provide.”
The Senate approved the Rural Community Hospital Demonstration Extension Act of 2015 without objection. The bill has 14 Senate co-sponsors. A related bill is pending in the House of Representatives.
Initiated in 2004, the Rural Community Hospital Demonstration Program is a five-year program created to help rural hospitals in the country’s 10 most sparsely populated states. The program was renewed for another five years in 2010 and expanded to include 20 of the most sparsely populated states. This program provides participating hospitals and tests the feasibility and advisability of a cost-based payment model for acute-care inpatient services.
Eligible hospitals must be located in a rural area and within one of the 20 most sparsely populated states (Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Minnesota, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Dakota, Utah, and Wyoming); must have fewer than 51 inpatient beds; must offer 24-hour emergency care services; and are not eligible for designation as a Community Access Hospital.
Approximately 35 hospitals have participated in this program since its inception. Currently, there are 23 hospitals participating in the Rural Community Hospital Demonstration Program.
-30-
WYDEN, GRASSLEY REQUEST COMMENT ON SOVALDI REPORT
WASHINGTON – Senate Finance Committee Ranking Member Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and senior committee member Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, today sent a letter to the health care and patient community requesting responses to the policy questions raised in their report, “The Price of Sovaldi and Its Impact on the U.S. Health Care System,” released on December 1, 2015. The report examined how Gilead Sciences, Inc. developed, priced, marketed and sold the hepatitis C drug Sovaldi, and its follow-on drug, Harvoni.
“We launched this investigation largely out of concern about the challenges that Gilead’s pricing decisions posed for public payers and the negative impact that restricted access had on patients within those systems,” the senators wrote. “Now we seek to gather information from the public about how to address policy issues including the financial impact of high prices of breakthrough drugs, ensuring patient access, and improving marketplace transparency.”
Please send all responses in PDF format to Report_Feedback@finance.
The full letter can be found here:
-30-
Filibuster Prevents WOTUS Vote to Override President's Veto
Sen. Chuck Grassley released the following statement about the filibuster led by Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid to prevent a vote on overriding a presidential veto of the Senate resolution to disapprove the Waters of the U.S. rule. Grassley is a cosponsor of the resolution, which was introduced by Sen. Joni Ernst. A resolution of disapproval is a legislative procedure used to try to overturn regulations and rules put forth by the executive branch.
“The EPA has been trying for years to cement its power grab. And, time after time, the courts have slapped down the EPA and said that the agency is overstepping its bounds. The EPA has claimed that the Clean Water Act’s definition of its jurisdiction over waterways should be interpreted very broadly to give the EPA authority over virtually all of the land in the United States. The Supreme Court has twice ruled that rather than accept the legal limits on its authority as confirmed by the Supreme Court and focus its efforts on preventing pollution from being discharged into our nation’s waterways, the EPA has again tried to stretch the bounds of its authority. Temporarily, the agency has been stopped after the courts determined that the rulemaking by EPA was flawed. Unfortunately, political theater has ruled the day, and the Democrats filibustered a bipartisan resolution to override a presidential veto and end this massive power grab by the EPA.
“This isn’t about whether the Clean Water Act is beneficial. Of course it makes sense to require a permit to discharge potential pollutants into waterways, but when you define 97 percent of the land in Iowa as a waterway, you quickly lose sight of the law’s intended focus. For instance, it makes sense to regulate dumping dirt or rocks into a river, but what the EPA defines as a waterway could encompass everything from a small pond to trickling creek bed to land that is dry most of the year. Requiring a federal discharge permit for activities on dry land would not affect runoff, which is by definition a “nonpoint source”, but ironically, it would discourage many common sense projects to prevent erosion or control runoff that involve moving soil in areas now designated a “water of the United States”. That would hamper ongoing efforts in Iowa to improve water quality under the Iowa Water Quality Plan, which was required by the Clean Water Act to address nonpoint source pollution and approved by the EPA.
“The rulemaking was clearly an effort by the EPA to push its own agenda. The rule was crafted outside of the agency’s authority in a process that left out the states and other key parties that are affected by the rule. And, legitimate concerns raised during the public comment period were ignored. On top of it all, the independent investigative arm of Congress, the Government Accountability Office, said that the agency used ‘covert propaganda’ to illegally promote its sweeping rule.
“The result of this rule is not cleaner water, but a bigger roll of red tape. It won’t make our water any cleaner, but it will limit the property rights of individual Americans and control over their own land. Under EPA’s definition, WOTUS affects everyone from farmers to construction companies to golf course managers in their day-to-day decision making. It’s an absurd use of power to further an agency’s own political agenda.”
-30-
