On October 10, the National Association for the Advancement of Orthotics and Prosthetics (NAAOP) released a statement regarding its efforts to promote O&P’s agenda in national healthcare-reform legislation. That statement appears in edited form below:
Healthcare reform enters a critical phase in the U.S. Senate this week as the Senate Finance Committee is preparing for a final vote on the overall package. Senator Olympia Snowe (R-ME) appears be the only Republican on the Committee even contemplating voting for the package after the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) certified that the bill would cost $829 billion over 10 years. However, due to the inclusion of a number of policies that offset the cost of the bill, the CBO reported the bill is expected to reduce the federal debt by about $40 billion over the next decade. It is expected to cover 94 percent of the U.S. population with some form of health insurance.
Still, major questions remain on significant issues in the bill, namely the fate of the public option, the ability of states to cover far more Medicaid beneficiaries than they do now, whether federal subsidies will be sufficient to cover the cost of insurance for low-income individuals and families, and whether it is possible to squeeze more than $400 billion over the next ten years out of the Medicare program without impacting the quality of care and without destabilizing the program from a provider perspective.
NAAOP continues its active involvement with the Senate and House healthcare reform process, focusing our resources on the goal of securing explicit recognition in the final bill that orthotics and prosthetics are included in the standard benefits package that all private health insurance plans must cover. This has been accomplished in the House bill to date but there is still work to be done in the Senate.
The Senate bill also includes an amendment offered by Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) that requires the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary to develop, through regulation, standard definitions of many terms including “durable medical equipment” (DME) for purposes of comparing benefit categories from one private health plan to another. This is a completely reasonable amendment. However, NAAOP is concerned that if the Secretary defines DME to include O&P, many of the same problems that impact the O&P field under the Medicare program will occur in the private market. NAAOP has raised with key staff the importance of separating DME from O&P for purposes of these definitions in private insurance and is seeking clarification in the bill that “orthotics and prosthetics” will be defined separately from DME. NAAOP has enlisted the help of other disability groups to help make this case.
Once the Finance Committee votes on the health reform bill, the Senate leadership will meld this bill with the bill produced earlier this summer by the Senate HELP Committee and bring to the Senate floor one piece of legislation. This bill is expected to be debated for weeks on the floor, with a long list of amendments to be considered. The process is likely to start within the next two weeks. NAAOP will continue to work independently, with the O&P Alliance, and with disability organizations to advance the interests of O&P patients and the providers who serve them.
