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Yesterday, as promised, President Bush vetoed legislation recently passed by Congress that would reauthorize and increase funding for the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP). The vetoed bill did not include the Medicare provisions earlier approved by the U.S. House of Representatives. The Democrat-controlled Congress must now decide whether to try to override the President's veto with a two-thirds vote in both chambers or revise the SCHIP legislation.
ASHA was successful in including a number of Medicare related provisions that affect speech-language pathologists and audiologists in the House passed version of the SCHIP bill. But the Senate chose not to include the Medicare package. The House-Senate conference committee decided to pursue only the SCHIP provision at this time. However, congressional leaders have vowed to bring forward a Medicare bill by year's end.
As previously reported, the House bill included:
- halting the scheduled 10% cut to the 2008 Medicare fee schedule rates and providing two years of positive updates (0.5% in 2008 and 0.5% in 2009);
- extending the exceptions process to the Medicare therapy caps for two years (currently, the exceptions process is scheduled to expire at the end of 2007);
- allowing private-practice speech-language pathologists to bill Medicare directly (H.R. 1774 & S. 45); and
- freezing further implementation of Medicare's so-called "75% Rule" on inpatient rehabilitation facilities.
ASHA will continue to fight this fall to have Congress pass the Medicare provisions contained in the earlier adopted House bill. However, we need your help. In the upcoming weeks, we will be asking you to e-mail your federal legislators. Please keep a look out for these alerts, and participate in the advocacy campaigns. For further information, please contact Elizabeth Mundinger, ASHA's Director of Federal and Political Advocacy, via e-mail at emundinger@asha.org or by phone at 800-498-2071, ext. 4420
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