For Immediate Release Office of the
Press Secretary March 14, 2002
Background on the Bush Administration's Health Care
Agenda
- President Bush outlined a comprehensive vision for helping all
Americans benefit from the potential of American health care in
the 21st century. The President’s health care agenda is designed
to improve the accessibility, affordability and accountability of
health care for every American – and to make sure that American
health care keeps getting better.
- Ensuring Every American Can Choose Affordable Health
Care That Meets Their Needs: The President believes that
we should trust patients, working with health care professionals,
to decide which treatment is best for them. Everyone should be
able to choose a health care plan that meets their needs at a
price they can afford. When people have good choices, health plans
have to compete for their business – which means higher quality
and better care. Many Americans enjoy access to good choices in
employer-sponsored health care plans, but many others do not have
good coverage options or are in danger of losing them. The
President proposes to address this problem through over $117
billion in initiatives to make good health care coverage more
available and affordable:
- Expanded Health Accounts: The President’s plan lifts the
excessive restrictions on Medical Savings Accounts (MSAs), by
lowering the deductible requirements to levels that are
increasingly common in private health insurance plans and to allow
preventive care coverage. These changes will allow many more
Americans to set up tax-free accounts to protect themselves from
high out-of-pocket costs. The President also proposed expanding
Flexible Savings Accounts (FSAs), to allow employees to roll over
as much as $500 in unspent health care contributions to an FSA to
use the following year or to contribute to their 401(k) plan. The
budgetary cost of these proposals to help families manage their
medical costs is $14 billion over 10 years.
- Association Health Plans: The President supports legislation
that would make it easier for small employers to pool together to
offer their employees better health coverage options, like many
large corporations are able to offer.
- Health Credits: The President’s budget proposes $89 billion in
new health credits to make private health insurance more
affordable for low- and middle-income American families who do not
have employer-subsidized insurance. The credits would be worth up
to $1000 for individuals and $3000 for families, would be
available when people need them to pay their insurance premiums,
and do not depend on taxes owed. The Administration will work with
states to give many Americans the option of using the health
credits through state-sponsored purchasing pools, to help ensure
that they too have access to a broad range of affordable coverage
options. The credits will enable 6 million Americans who would
otherwise be uninsured during a year to get coverage, and will
help many more who are struggling to pay for their own health
insurance with little or no government help. The President also
supports legislation to provide $15 billion in health credits to
provide quick help for workers who have lost their jobs during the
recession. The credits would pay 60 percent of the cost of keeping
their health care coverage and would assist over 4 million
displaced workers.
- Better Medicaid and State Children’s Health Insurance Program
(S-CHIP): The Bush Administration will continue to work with
states and Congress to provide innovative coverage in these
important government programs, including health care coverage
options. In just the past year, the Administration has already
worked with states to expand innovative Medicaid and S-CHIP
coverage for almost 2 million more Americans.
- Medicaid: The President’s budget provides $350 million to
continue funding Medicaid for families in transition from welfare
to work. This coverage helps to ensure that work pays for families
by preventing them from losing their health coverage when they
start jobs.
- S-CHIP: The President's budget strengthens S-CHIP by making
available to states an estimated $3.2 billion in unused S-CHIP
funds that otherwise will be lost. The S-CHIP law originally
required states that did not use their full S-CHIP allotment
during the previous three years to return unused funds to the
Federal Treasury. These additional matching funds will enable all
states to expand coverage to the uninsured.
- Strengthening Health Care for Seniors and the Disabled
- Strengthened Medicare: In his budget and State of the Union
address, the President renewed his commitment to provide
prescription drug coverage in Medicare, based on the framework for
bipartisan legislation that he proposed in July 2001. The
President’s budget includes $190 billion in net additional
spending for improving Medicare. The President’s framework would
give seniors better health care options, including:
- Making Medicare prescription drug coverage available to all
seniors, including lower prices on all prescriptions and
protection against high out-of-pocket drug costs.
- Providing a government plan with a prescription drug benefit,
better preventive coverage, and better protection against high
medical costs, with more affordable Medigap (supplemental
insurance) options.
- Giving more reliable private health care options for seniors
who prefer the lower out-of-pocket costs and innovative benefits
like “disease management” services available in such programs.
Seniors who choose more efficient plans would be able to use the
savings to reduce their Medicare premiums.
- Allowing seniors to keep the coverage that they have now, with
no changes, if they prefer it.
- Because the Medicare drug benefit and other improvements will
take several years to set up, President Bush has also proposed
steps to improve Medicare benefits immediately, including:
- Implementing a Medicare-endorsed prescription drug card
program to give seniors quick access to competitive discounts from
drug manufacturers and to provide other valuable pharmacy
services, and to provide the experience needed to implement the
Medicare drug benefit effectively.
- Helping states implement comprehensive drug coverage for
low-income beneficiaries as quickly as possible. The Federal
government will pay 90 percent of the costs of comprehensive drug
coverage for beneficiaries with incomes between 100 and 150
percent of poverty – providing comprehensive drug coverage for up
to 3 million additional low-income Medicare beneficiaries who lack
drug coverage now at a cost of $8 billion over the next 3 years.
This coverage would be fully integrated with the new Medicare drug
benefit when it is set up.
- Taking immediate action to make better private health plan
options available in Medicare, by correcting chronic underpayments
to Medicare’s private plans. This proposal costs approximately $4
billion over 3 years.
- Giving seniors access to two additional Medigap (supplemental
insurance) plans, with updated benefits that provide better
protection against high medical expenses and assistance with
prescription drugs at a more affordable cost than the most popular
plans.
- Long-Term Care: The President believes that Americans who need
long-term care assistance should have more control over how they
receive the care they need. The President’s budget proposes to
make premium payments for long-term care insurance fully
deductible, to provide a much-needed, more flexible alternative to
“spending down” to Medicaid. The 10-year cost of this proposal is
$20 billion.
- Assistance for Caregivers: The Bush Administration proposes an
additional tax exemption for persons who take time to care for
parents or children who need long-term assistance. The personal
exemption is $3,000 in 2002, and the 10-year cost of this proposal
is $3.6 billion.
- Improving the Quality of Health Care
- Patients’ Bill Of Rights: The President strongly supports the
passage of a Patients’ Bill of Rights that leaves medical
decisions in the hands of physicians, instead of insurance
companies – and urges Congress to reconcile differences and
complete its work this year.
- Prohibit Genetic Discrimination: President Bush will work with
Congress to develop fair and reasonable legislation that will make
genetic discrimination illegal and provide protections consistent
with other existing anti-discrimination laws.
- Better Information for Patients: The Administration continues
to take steps to make better information on medical treatments and
the quality of health care providers available to the public,
including new information on nursing home quality.
- Effective Privacy Protections for Medical Records: Electronic
medical records hold the promise of improving quality of care for
patients and for giving them more control over their health
information, but only with strong medical privacy protections give
patients the security and confidence they need. The Administration
is implementing new medical privacy protections to do just that.
- Effective Support to Increase Biomedical Research and
Strengthen the Health Care Safety Net:
- Support for Biomedical Research: The President’s budget
includes a total of $27.3 billion for the National Institutes of
Health (NIH), including the final installment of $3.9 billion that
will complete the goal the doubling of the NIH budget. This
increase will allow NIH will expand its efforts to support
research to improve the prevention, detection and treatment of
diseases.
- Improved Public Health Systems to Better Protect the Public:
The President’s budget includes $5.9 billion for bioterrorism
preparedness, an increase of $4.5 billion – more than three times
the 2002 base funding level. The budget supports a variety of
activities to prevent, identify and respond to incidents of
bioterrorism – including strengthening state and local health
infrastructures, enhancing medical communications and disease
surveillance capabilities and improving specialized Federal
response capabilities. The budget also provides $1.7 billion for
NIH research into new vaccines and diagnostics and increased
security at its facilities.
- Community Health Centers: The President’s budget includes $1.5
billion for CHCs, a $114 million increase that would continue the
Bush Administration's long-term strategy to add 1,200 new and
expanded health center sites over five years and serve an
additional 6.1 million patients. The increase for fiscal year 2003
will support 170 new and expanded health centers, and provide
services to a million more patients.
- National Health Service Corps: Since 1970, over 20,000
doctors, nurses, dentists, midwives, and mental health clinicians
have been placed in medically underserved communities through the
National Health Service Corps (NHSC). The President’s budget
includes $191.5 million -- a $44 million increase -- to strengthen
the NHSC. With the increased funding, the NHSC will provide
scholarships or loan assistance to about 1,800 professionals
practicing in underserved areas - an increase of about 500
participants.
|