H.R. 3162 - the "Children's Health and Medicare Protection Act of 2007”

H.R. 3162 would replace the scheduled 9.9 percent cut to the Medicare Physician Fee Schedule for 2008 with a 0.5 percent positive update for both 2008 and 2009. 

Please contact your House members and let them know that such a positive update to the Medicare Physician Fee Schedule will help to ensure that Emergency Physicians nationwide can continue to provide quality emergency healthcare services to all Americans. 

To contact your House representative, just click on this link and fill out the information: http://www.house.gov/writerep/. The link will take you to the Write your Representative page on the United States House of Representatives website.

We received this important information from one of our physicians.  

Please read and consider contacting your Senators to support this effort. 

Senators to Vote to Reauthorize SCHIP! 

The U.S. Senate is scheduled to vote on legislation that would reauthorize the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) before the end of July. The reauthorization of this successful child health program will help countless pediatric patients in South Texas.

On July 19, the Senate Finance Committee passed by a vote of 17-4 a bipartisan bill to reauthorize SCHIP. The bill would provide enough funding to cover an additional 3.3 million eligible but unenrolled children in Medicaid and SCHIP, while maintaining coverage to all kids currently enrolled in SCHIP. Additionally, it would provide for pediatric quality measures important to all children’s hospitals. Methodist Children’s Hospital strongly supports this legislation as it will provide insurance for a percentage of our patient population.

SCHIP is the nation’s safety net for children whose parents make too much money to qualify for Medicaid but not enough to purchase private health insurance. Since its creation in 1997, SCHIP has provided more than 6 million children with health coverage annually. In that time, the percentage of uninsured children has dropped from 22 percent to less than 15 percent.  

The full Senate is expected to vote on the SCHIP reauthorization bill in the next 10 days. 

Please urge our Senators to vote "yes" to reauthorize the program! It will only take a few minutes to personalize and send a pre-written letter provided at the Web site for the National Association of Children’s Hospitals and Related Institute.

Just click on this link and fill out the information: http://capwiz.com/nach/officials/congress/?view=myofficials&azip=78229&bzip=&lvl=C&submit.x=14&submit.y=11

Thank you very much for your help in this very important matter.

The following information was provided by the TMA: 

The Children's Health and Medicare Protection (CHAMP) Act <http://waysandmeans.house.gov/media/pdf/110/CHAMP/summary.pdf> should be up for debate on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives this week. TMA and the AMA both support the CHAMP Act as the best chance to avoid a 10-percent cut in physicians' Medicare payments next year.  

Here are the good things we see in the CHAMP Act so far:

·       It stops the 10-percent (2008) and 5-percent (2009) cuts in Medicare physician payments mandated by current law and replaces them with one-half percent increases each year;

·       It reauthorizes the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP), which is set to expire Sept. 30;

·       It stalls, for at least two more years, additional, location-specific Medicare physician payment cuts of up to nearly 2 percent for physicians in most parts of Texas;

·       It authorizes projects to demonstrate the value of expanding "medical homes";

·       It expands mental health coverage under Medicare.

The Texas Health and Human Services Commission proposed a 15-percent increase for evaluation and management codes for treating adult Medicaid patients. While details are not yet available, state officials say they also plan to boost physicians' CHIP reimbursement by an amount similar to increases already set for children's Medicaid.

Details are on the TMA Web site:

<http://www.texmed.org/Template.aspx?id=5983> .