Health Care

Policy Priorities for 2008

• Continue to support bipartisan legislation encouraging widespread adoption of Health IT and work to include in it a national standard for E-prescribing, a paperless approach that would reduce administrative costs and human errors in prescribing and dispensing prescriptions.
• Support the Department of Health and Human Services' transparency initiative (Support Health Information Technology, Provide Quality Information, Provide Pricing Information, and Promote Quality and Efficiency of Care), which would enable employers and consumers to make smart health care spending decisions.

• Actively oppose any effort to remove the non-interference provision from the Medicare Modernization Act.
• Ensure that the Medicare program is protected from government-imposed price controls on prescription drugs and offers choices to seniors and people with disabilities.

• Support linking physician Medicare reimbursements to performance-driven benchmarks. Physician reimbursement rates currently are set by a sustainable growth rate formula that needs comprehensive reform.

• Oppose extension of the Medicare Secondary Payer period for End-Stage Renal Disease, a cost-shift that would save Medicare money but vastly increase costs for employers.
• Support inclusion of funding for comparative effectiveness research to increase patient safety and help control health care costs. Oppose funding this research through new premium taxes.
• Oppose cuts in the Medicare Advantage program.
• Support closure of the physician self-referral loophole for physician-owned limited service hospitals.

• Support stand-alone legislation that offers tax credits for employer-sponsored workplace wellness programs for employees.

• Help develop off-patent, generic versions of biologic medicines by seeking to balance intellectual property rights, patient safety, and a consumer-driven need to lower the cost of health care. Biologic medicines are made from living organisms and consist of vaccines, blood products, or liquid form injectables that often treat diseases such as cancer and multiple sclerosis as well as rare disorders.

• Continue to support the Senate-passed, employer- and insurance-backed Mental Health Parity bill (S. 558). The Chamber will oppose the House legislation, which has been passed by three committees of jurisdiction but has not yet been considered by the full House. The House bill, H.R. 1424, would be costly for employers and ineffective in enacting parity. The Senate mental health parity legislation takes a balanced and reasoned approach to addressing mental health parity insurance issues.

• Continue to urge Congress not to erode preemption under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act and continue co-chairing advocacy efforts by the National Coalition on Benefits, a broad coalition of groups seeking to protect ERISA.

• Oppose legislation that would create price controls on life sciences products as well as raise prices for employers, employees, veterans, and others.

• Oppose legislation that would reopen the Health Information Privacy and Accountability Act, which would create onerous new costs and obligations on employers who voluntarily sponsor health benefits.

• Promote legislation that would allow money in Flexible Spending Accounts to be rolled over, eliminating the use-it-or-lose-it rule.
• Support changes to Health Savings Accounts to make them more flexible and appealing to consumers and plan sponsors.

• Support legislation that gives small businesses the option to purchase health benefits with the same tax advantages that large businesses have, pool together to leverage purchasing power, participate in benefits plans that are not burdened with costly state mandates, and permit the owners of small businesses to participate in their companies' benefits plan.