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Below is this week’s update on the Affordable Care Act. As always, thank you for all you do every day to support laws and policies that help cancer patients and their families   Update on ... reporting requirements for small business.   ACS CAN opposed the amendment because its financial offset was to strip the Prevention and Public Health Fund ($17 billion over 10 years) of nearly all its funding. As you know, the Affordable Care Act established the Fund to support important prevention programs like tobacco cessation, obesity and nutrition programs and public health infrastructure. The amendment would have also made significant changes to the individual mandate requirements included in the new law that ...

... its plan for reducing the national debt.   The House budget resolution calls for $6 trillion in cuts over 10 years and repeals the Affordable Care Act by denying the funds needed to implement the law, such as subsidies for middle-class Americans to purchase insurance in state exchanges and elimination of the Prevention and Public Health Fund. Both the budget resolution and White House plan would seek to reduce Medicare and Medicaid spending.   The House plan would transform Medicaid into a block grant program and Medicare into a voucher system whereby seniors would receive a fixed subsidy to purchase health insurance in the private market.   The President’s proposal would reduce Medicaid expenditures by standardizing the federal match and ...

... with the American Diabetes Association and the American Heart Association in the litigation challenging the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act.  The brief received favorable mention in several news articles, some of which recounted its central argument that Congress had the authority to enact the individual mandate -- which requires almost all individuals to purchase or carry health insurance by 2014 -- to ensure the success of patient protection provisions such as the ban on pre-existing condition exclusions and annual ... , which links to a copy of the brief and coverage from CQ.   State Update   Many states are busy trying to pass legislation to create health benefit exchanges during their newly opened 2012 legislative sessions. Approximately 20 states that have almost no foundation to build on ...

Capitol Hill Update   Earlier today, the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Health approved "The State Flexibility Act" (HR 1683). The bill, introduced last week, would repeal the “maintenance of effort” requirements (MOE) included in the Affordable Care Act (ACA), which prevents states from cutting their Medicaid rolls ahead of the program’s expansion in 2014. The full Energy and Commerce ... because doing so could threaten cancer patients’ access to lifesaving treatment, add to the number of uninsured and weaken our nation’s health care system.   Read the joint media statement from ACS CAN, the American Diabetes Association and the American Heart Association that was ...