Just when everyone thought health care reform was dead….it’s baaaack!!! The last week of February showed the American people that President Barack Obama and Congressional leaders are committed to advancing and enacting meaningful health care reform. ANA wants to make sure you have the latest information on what is happening in Washington, DC!
ANA has come out in support of the President’s (FY 2011) budget proposal, released February 1st which demonstrates his continued commitment to strengthening the nation’s nursing workforce. The $590 million included for health professions programs includes $244 million for increasing the capacity of the nurse workforce.
Wow!! We called on nurses to help us show Congress that health care reform needs to be passed now – and they ANSWERED! In less than one week over 6,000 have signed the “Let’s Get It Done!” petition and showed their support for breaking the impasse in Congress and getting meaningful health reform passed this year.
While health care reform has stalled at the federal level, it’s interesting to look at what has been done. Three years after Massachusetts passed health care reform legislation, the legislature reports that 97% of residents have health insurance, the highest in the nation. Massachusetts Senator Richard Moore, chair of Health Care Financing Committee offers that “health care reform in Massachusetts was much more than expanding access to health insurance. It also addressed improving health care quality and containing costs. What else can we learn from the Massachusetts experience?
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) is giving Medicare providers – including APRNs – another year to enroll or update their enrollment in the PECOS system, as a condition of payment for items and services they order for their patients, or referrals they make to other clinicians.
ANA’s PAC and complementary political education program are key to ANA’s legislative success in the U.S. Congress and a strong part of ANA’s overall success. ANA-PAC builds relation¬ships and provides bipartisan support for pro-nursing members of Congress. In addition to increasing nursing’s visibility in the political arena, ANA-PAC dem¬onstrates to policymakers that we are se¬rious about our issues.
