A Bluestem Prairie

Children's Defense Fund: Medicare recipients, children can be thankful for Walz’s vote

In the letters section of today's Mankato Free Press, Jim Koppel responds to attack ads that distort the facts about the CHAMP Act. He writes:

I am state director for Children’s Defense Fund Minnesota.

A recent full page ad attacking Rep. Tim Walz is nothing more than an attempt by well-heeled special interests based outside Minnesota to scare our state’s vulnerable seniors.

The ad was placed by health care groups who have been profiting from billions of dollars in overpayments from the federal Medicare program. Walz voted to end these overpayments and put the savings toward providing health insurance for the 9 million American children currently without health coverage, including 80,000 in Minnesota.

The special interest ads claim that seniors will be hurt if these overpayments of taxpayer funds are stopped. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, Walz’s efforts will only strengthen the Medicare program by stopping this drain of funds. His efforts have been endorsed by the AARP, the American Medical Association, the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, and numerous other Medicare beneficiary advocacy groups.

AARP, the nation’s largest consumer and senior organization, recently applauded Walz for his vote, saying he 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.”

With rural Minnesota communities seeing steep increases in the number of uninsured children, Walz acted on behalf of his district.

Our state’s seniors who rely on Medicare, along with our children, and our taxpayers can all be thankful for Walz’s vote.

Walz responds to attack ads from special interest groups

Earlier in the week, we posted information about attacks ads running in the Mankato Free Press. Several senior citizens had contacted us via email, so we dug into the story. Firedog Lake also looked at similar ads in another district in the post Targeting Democratic Freshmen By Frightening Senior Citizens.

In today's Free Press, Congressman Walz responds to the ads in In response — Special interest ad misleads:

Last Friday and again on Tuesday, Free Press readers had an opportunity to observe how special interest groups attempt to influence decisions made in Washington.

The so-called Alliance for Quality Nursing Home Care and the American Health Care Association ran a full page color ad costing anywhere from $1,500 to $3,000 in Friday's and Tuesday’s editions of The Free Press. These special interests urged constituents to call my office in opposition to a bill that most Americans support, the CHAMP Act.

This legislation provides 11 million children from low-income families with health insurance, corrects overpayments by Medicare to private insurers, expands preventative care coverage and mental health services under Medicare, ensures patient access to physicians, and safeguards high-quality care in rural areas.

Hundreds of non-profit groups and professional organizations supported my vote, including the AARP, Children’s Defense Fund, American Nurses Association, the AFL-CIO, and the American Medical Association. These grassroots and non-profit associations stand in stark contrast to the big businesses that bought the ad.

The Alliance for Quality Nursing Home Care is an umbrella group of the American Health Care Association, which is made up of companies like the pharmaceutical giant Merck, Credit Suisse, and several of the largest for-profit nursing homes, all of whom make millions of dollars from the Medicare system.

A major contributor to AQNHC is HCR Manor Care whose CEO, Paul Ormond, received an $18 million dollar pay package last year, and holds stock options valued up to $186 million, according to the Toledo Blade. I surmise that for Mr. Ormond, The Free Pass ad was a good buy, considering that defeating this legislation would mean millions of additional taxpayer dollars to his company.

Instead of heeding the advice of biased organizations such as the Alliance, my colleagues in Congress and I listened to the recommendations of the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPac), a non-partisan, independent group, which found that skilled nursing facilities were making substantial profits from Medicare and judged that there would be ample access to nursing care for beneficiaries even without these taxpayer-funded windfalls.

The CHAMP Act froze, but did not cut, funding to skilled nursing facilities in order to allow fair competition with inpatient rehabilitation facilities. Mr. Ormond’s profits will not increase this year as a result of more taxpayer subsidies, but for seniors the availability of high-quality, competitive care will improve.

The best part of this lesson is that our democracy is alive and well. Congress did not fold to pressure from multi-million dollar conglomerates that falsely claim that the CHAMP Act is taking away from Medicare and from seniors. For too long, these private insurance companies and big nursing home chains have reaped the benefits of Medicare overpayments, and when I voted for the CHAMP Act, I voted for legislation that will help the most vulnerable of our community: our low-income children and seniors.

The people of the First District don’t have to buy expensive and deceptive ads. They don’t have to hire expensive lobbyists. People in southern Minnesota can be confident that I have and will continue to cast votes that are in the interest of our children and seniors, no matter how many full page, color ads costing thousands of dollars the special interest groups can buy.

Rep. Tim Walz is a Democrat who represents the First Congressional District.

Update: Welcome Firedog Lake visitors. For a new round-up post about this issue, click here.

 

Walz targeted on CHAMP Act vote; vote supported by AARP and AMA

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.