According to their web sites, the Alliance for Quality Nursing Home Care and the American Health Association have launched a new ad campaign targeting Congressman Walz and other Democrats in swing districts. With the exception of Georgia's Jim Marshall and John Barrow, all targeted representatives are freshmen. UPDATE, 4:45: There's a good post about this campaign in operation in other districts over at Firedog Lake. We learned over there that Marshall and Baron Hill are actually being praised for their votes against the CHAMP Act. [end update]
Full-page, color ads are running in district newspapers, including the Mankato Free Press.
Both groups object to what they claim are cuts in Medicare funding contained within the CHAMP Act, which seeks to extend health care insurance for all American children and reform Medicare. According to the groups, $2.7 billion over five years would be cut from nursing home care in order to pay for children's health insurance under SCHIP. Those supporting the law as written point out that payment levels are frozen, rather than cut.
While the provider groups are targeting Walz and other Democrats, the reaction from groups representing seniors to the CHAMP Act hit a different note. The nation's larest group, AARP Applauds Passage of CHAMP Act:
On August 1, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the Children's Health And Medicare Protection (CHAMP) Act by a 225-204 margin. This bill will improve Medicare for older Americans and strengthen the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) for millions of children.
How did your Member of Congress vote? Click here to find out a[nd] send him or her a message.
AARP applauds the Members of Congress who voted for the CHAMP Act. These lawmakers put the needs of older Americans and low-income children ahead of special interests, and took the necessary action to help improve our health care system. SCHIP and Medicare are critical for the health care of this country and the CHAMP Act makes necessary improvements to both programs.
We are disappointed by the representatives who voted against strengthening health care for children and improving Medicare. When SCHIP reauthorization and Medicare legislation return to the floor for final approval, we hope those members will re-think their vote against such a critical bill.
Find out how your member voted and send him or her a message about this critical vote.
If you are one of the thousands of AARP members who sent an e-mail or made a phone call to your Member of Congress, we thank you. Your actions do make a difference in the lives of millions of Americans on critical issues such as the CHAMP Act. Keep in touch with the campaign by going to www.aarp.org/getinvolved.
The American Medical Association also favored the passage of the CHAMP Act:
"The American Medical Association applauds the members of the U.S. House of Representatives who voted to pass legislation that preserves access to health care for children and seniors. The House rose to the challenge of making sure that two critical health care issues were addressed before the August recess, and while there is more work to be done, now millions of low-income children and seniors can know that the House is committed to ensuring that they continue to have access to health care.
The CHAMP Act will ensure that two of our most vulnerable populations can get in and see the doctor by renewing the federal health care coverage program for poor children and stopping steep Medicare cuts to physicians caring for seniors. A full 60 percent of physicians tell the AMA that next year's harsh 10 percent payment cut will force them to limit the number of new Medicare patients they can treat. By increasing the tobacco tax and eliminating overpayments to insurance companies offering private Medicare plans, Congress has found two appropriate ways to pay for these important national health care priorities.
"As soon as the Senate passes legislation to renew children's health care coverage, America's doctors urge Congress to expedite the conference process. Congress must finalize the legislation before SCHIP expires on September 30. Working together, we are confident that members of Congress, from both chambers and both sides of the aisle, can find common ground so that children and seniors will continue to have access to needed health care services."
Earlier in the year, the ACHA had praised Walz for signing a letter opposing the Bush Administration's proposed $10 billion cuts over five years to Medicare and Medicaid.
AQNHC enjoys a somewhat different history. In the past, AQNHC has been associated with support for Republicans, according to Sourcewatch. Open Secrets has published its lobbying data.
Across the country, some writers and groups have responded directly to the ads. Joel Engelhardt at the Palm Beach Post took a scathing look Behind those hursing-home ads. An SEIU Vice President called for the group to come clean about its scare tactics:
SEIU Executive Vice President for Long Term Care Gerry Hudson said the following in an open letter to Alan Rosenbloom, AQNHC President, in response to the Alliance’s denial that recent ad campaign was meant to scare seniors through warrantless claims about threats to Medicare funding:
“The evidence contradicts your recent communications on the matter of quality of care for America’s seniors. To borrow a turn of phrase, it appears ‘the Alliance doth protest too much.’ The facts are simple:
• The Alliance for Quality Nursing Home Care has published newspaper ads and taken out television ads that both target politicians who support SCHIP and seek to scare seniors into believing the current SCHIP bill, if enacted, threatens their care (“Behind those nursing-home ads,” Palm Beach Post, 8/7).
• While nursing homes are pleading poverty and the Alliance for Quality Nursing Home Care is paying for manipulative ads that endanger the funding of SCHIP, HCR Manor Care's CEO Paul Ormond stands to make upwards of $186 million dollars in the Carlyle buyout deal.If the industry were truly concerned about the quality of care for America’s seniors, they would invest their resources in improving care. Instead they plead poverty as they drain hundreds of millions of dollars out of the public coffers. Since two-thirds of HCR Manor Care’s revenues -- and indeed of the revenues of the industry as a whole -- are coming from public dollars, we are left to ask who is in fact is paying for the television ads? . . .
We understand that the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC), an independent federal body established by the Balanced Budget Act of 1997 (P.L. 105-33) to advise the U.S. Congress on issues affecting the Medicare program, recommended freezing payments to skilled nursing facilities, rather than cutting them. See pages 224-225 of this report from the Ways and Means Committee:
The Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC) makes annual recommendations regarding automatic payment updates in the law for Medicare providers. They recommended a zero percent update for skilled nursing facilities and the Committee followed their advice. The Committee notes that this market basket change is effective for only the last three quarters of FY2008.
The Committee would highlight that skilled nursing facilities directly benefit by the extension of the exceptions process for therapy services included in this act and by removing clinical social workers from the SNF consolidated billing requirement. Furthermore, the payment change for inpatient rehabilitation facilities for unilateral hip replacements, unilateral knee replacements, and hip fractures, will enable to nursing homes to compete on a more level playing field with IRFs.
We'll be doing more research to figure out why the provider groups disagree so sharply with Medpac, AARP, the AMA, the American Nurses Association and dozens of other groups.
Great and informative post (as usual.)
I believe the proposed legislation does NOT cut any funds to the lower cost, more efficient, traditional government Medicare plan that the vast majority of seniors use BUT does cut the Medicare Advantage which Paul Krugmen describes in his August 1st column, as a "privatization scheme that pays insurance companies to provide coverage, and costs taxpayers 12 percent more per beneficiary than traditional Medicare." Medicare Advantage was created by Bush in the passage of the Prescription Part D (Drug) and we can thank former Minnesota Congressman Mark Kennedy for his deciding vote to give it the one vote margin of victory. (Gutknecht voted against it)
What we have here is a smear campaign against Walz and the Democrats. The bill was primarily a party-based vote with 3 Republican rollovers including Chris Shays of CT. Why would the Republicans vote against this bill ... not because of the desire to eliminate funding cuts for Medicare Advantage, but instead because the legislation including coverage for insurance for children of the working poor. Congressional Republicans do not want any expansion of insurance coverage yet people like Tim Pawlenty and other state Governors recognize the need for SCHIPS.
It is my understanding that the legislation has many positive aspects :
• Reauthorizes the State Children's Health Insurance Program for 6 million children and provides 5 million more low-income children with health coverage – a total of 11 million children.
• Ensures seniors continue to have access to the doctors of their choice by stopping a 10% payment cut to doctors.
• Encourages seniors to seek preventive health benefits by eliminating co-payments and deductibles.
• Protects low-income seniors by expanding and improving programs to ensure Medicare remains affordable for those with lower incomes.
• Ensure seniors in rural areas continue to have access to Medicare and the doctors they trust.
• Shores up Medicare's finances by extending the solvency of the Medicare Trust Fund by two years
Smear and deceive is the objective here ... the Nursing Home Industry just wants to ensure (or should I say insure) their continued payment levels.
Congress is taking Good Action here addressing a problem, yet the smear campaign will ensure that Congress's ratings stay in the 18% favorable range.
Posted by: MinnesotaCentral | August 29, 2007 at 02:00 PM