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News
1-21-10 Health Care Update from John Seffrin
January 22, 2010
Following the historic passage of health care reform legislation in the U.S. Senate in December and the U.S. House of Representatives in November, congressional leaders have been meeting since the beginning of the year to merge the two versions into one final bill.
Tuesday’s special election to fill the Massachusetts Senate seat held by Edward Kennedy before his death has shifted the strategy for producing and passing final legislation. With the loss of a 60th Senate vote in favor of a bill, congressional supporters of reform no longer have the votes necessary to overcome a certain filibuster by the legislation’s opponents in the Senate.
Congressional leaders are reportedly considering several options for moving forward, and the exact course the bill will take is currently far from clear. However, the message of the American Cancer Society Cancer Action NetworkSM to Congress remains the same – cancer patients, survivors, and their families need reform now, not later.
The House and Senate bills both represent an enormous improvement over the status quo. Each would turn the current “sick care” system into one that:
1) Focuses heavily on disease prevention
2) Guarantees access to care regardless of pre-existing conditions
3) Emphasizes patients’ quality of life.
ACS CAN has been working hard to strengthen the bills, and its efforts paid off when the Senate added language to its bill banning annual and lifetime benefits limits that could cause a sudden termination of coverage for lifesaving cancer care. ACS CAN is now urging congressional leaders to continue moving forward on comprehensive reform and not to step back on the promise of significant improvements to the health care system. In fact, a majority of members of both the House and Senate have already supported comprehensive reform with their votes.
We know that the final bill will not be perfect. We also know that what has been a contentious process for passing a bill is likely to become more so. Politics may ultimately prevent a bill from becoming law, but ACS CAN’s focus has never been on the process – it has been and continues to be on patients. ACS CAN will keep working – now and in the future – toward the goal of improving the system for people with cancer and their families until that goal is achieved.
The American Cancer Society and ACS CAN staff and volunteer leaders continue to show strong interest in the mission-critical effort to improve access to health care nationwide. Additional information about the effort to pass comprehensive health care reform is available there and on the ACS CAN Web site at fightcancer.org.
We will continue to keep you informed of efforts to pass national health care reform as congressional leaders determine their next steps in this legislative effort. As always, thank you for all you do to make our lifesaving work possible.
John R. Seffrin, PhD
Chief Executive Officer