Congress should not extend Medicare sequestration to help pay for the bipartisan infrastructure framework because health care providers cannot sustain additional Medicare cuts and Medicare funds should not be used to pay for non-health care programs, the AHA, American Medical Association, American Health Care Association, National Association for Home Care & Hospice, National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization, and Association for Clinical Oncology tells Senate leaders.
Letters
Throughout the year, the AHA comments on a vast number of proposed and interim final rules put forth by the federal regulatory agencies. In addition, AHA communicates with federal legislators to convey the hospital field's position on potential legislative changes that would impact patients and patient care. Below are the most recent letters from the AHA to these bodies.
Latest
In a letter to Representatives Robin L. Kelly and Larry Bucshon, the AHA express support for H.R. 4387, the Maternal Health Quality Improvement Act.
In a letter to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, AHA expresses continued concerns about audit determinations denying hospitals a “mid-build exception” to the site-neutral payment policy and urged the agency to extend by at least 180 days the July 18 and Sept. 16 deadlines for hospitals to identify and return, respectively, any overpayments.
The AHA expresses support for the Protecting Rural Telehealth Access Act (S. 1988),
Letter the AHA sent to Senators Grassley and Durbin in support of S. 2304, Drug-Price Transparency for Consumers Act of 2021. The bill will allow HHS to require the disclosure of drug pricing information in direct-to-consumer (DTC) advertising.
The AHA urges the State Department to give registered nurses seeking immigrant visas priority for processing to solve the backlog of immigrant visas for eligible foreign-trained nurses.
Letter to HHS Secretary Becerra urging him to allow providers that received funding prior to June 30, 2020 to use their COVID-19 Provider Relief Fund payments through the end of the COVID-19 public health emergency or, at a minimum, through the end of 2021.
Letter to OSHA requesting a six-month delay of its compliance dates for the recently announced COVID-19 Health Care Emergency Temporary Standard, thus giving hospitals and health systems ample time to implement the policy’s many new requirements.
A letter to Senate leaders from America’s Hospitals and Health Systems urging them to forgo to the use of an extension of mandatory sequestration, as well as unspent COVID-19 provider relief funds, as financing sources for any infrastructure package.
The AHA comments on the LTCH provisions in the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ fiscal year 2022 proposed rule for the inpatient and LTCH prospective payment systems.