Another Action Alert from the Senior Senator from the State of Iowa ...

Chuck Grassley's concerns and views on the recent health care insurance bill via an e-mail ...

ACTION ALERT

Right after the final health care vote today, I introduced a bill
to apply the new health care law to the President, Vice President, cabinet
members, top White House staff, and the congressional staff who drafted the
measure enacted this week. I’ve offered amendments to establish this
accountability in Congress and the administration, but the amendments
have twice been rejected by the Senate majority. Congress can act to
pass my
free-standing bill at any time, and it should.

Click here to watch an interview about the history of this
effort.

If Congress doesn’t act, there’s a double standard. As it
stands today, President Obama does not have to live under the Obama health care
reforms, and neither does the congressional staff that helped to write the
overhaul. The message to the people at the grassroots is that the reforms
are good enough for you, but not for us.

Even so, the new health care law includes most of the amendment I got
adopted by the Finance Committee last September, and that will require members
of Congress and their staffs to get their health insurance through health
insurance exchanges.

Public officials who make the laws or lead efforts to have laws
changed should live under those laws. It’s the same principle that
motivated the bill I got passed in 1995, which for the first time applied 12
major civil rights, labor and employment laws to Congress.

***

Also today, senators voted to defeat my amendment to get
rid of one of the sweetheart deals in the new health care law, giving five rural
states better treatment than every other rural state, including Iowa.

My amendment would have used money that’s obligated to
the special deal for improved Medicare payments to physicians in all rural
states this year and next. My amendment would have better safeguarded a
formula fix that I got in the health care reform during Finance Committee work
last fall. This fix makes sure accurate data is used to make geographic
adjustments for Medicare payments to physicians and other health care
professionals. It’s a matter of equity for rural providers who have been
penalized by an unfair formula factor.

Despite the defeat of this amendment today, my formula fix
remains in the new law. In fact, a number of my amendments and legislative
initiatives are in the health-care reform bill that became law on Tuesday,
including my reform to make sure tax-exempt hospitals are held accountable for
their special status. My legislation to require pharmaceutical and device
manufacturers to report payments to physicians is included. So is my
legislation to establish greater transparency about nursing home ownership and
safety, and my bill to disclose self-referral ownership interests in imaging
facilities. I authored the Medicare fraud-fighting provisions in the new
law, and the value-based purchasing reforms are based on legislation I developed
several years ago in the Finance Committee. I also developed the
provisions to improve Medicare reimbursement for mid-sized “tweener” hospitals,
a number of which are located in Iowa. These items and others were put
into the proposal during the many months of work I did last year as Ranking
Member of the Finance Committee with the Committee Chairman, Senator Max Baucus,
during our effort to try to put together a bipartisan reform bill. The
provisions remained in the legislation throughout the process, and the fact that
they did shows that they are good policy and nonpartisan initiatives.

The final health care reform bill was massive in size
and scope, and I voted against it for a
number of reasons, including the fact that it increases taxes and
new mandates on job-creating small businesses, raises taxes and fees that the
Congressional Budget Office says will be passed on to consumers and result in
higher health insurance premiums, imposes mandates and huge fines on
individuals, fails to address reforming the Medicare physician payment
sustainable growth rate formula known as the SGR and, instead, cuts Medicare
spending not to improve Medicare but to start an unsustainable new entitlement
program. It also fails
to do anything about health care inflation, which was supposed to
be a major goal of reform.

Click
here to see an interview about it.

The impact of this bill on the sustainability of jobs and our economy leaves one with many doubts about short-term and long-term future of moving Americans from 88% to 95% health care coverage. We agree with Mr. Grassley that government officials should be required to live under the same rules and laws as the American taxpayer.

Robin Tucker