Wonk Room » Senators Propose To Cut Health Care Provisions From Stimulus

Senators Propose To Cut Health Care Provisions From Stimulus

By Igor Volsky on Feb 5th, 2009 at 2:32 pm

Senators Propose To Cut Health Care Provisions From Stimulus

“Anxious over the ballooning size of the proposed economic stimulus package,” Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE) and Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) have banded together to identify spending that they believe should be cut. But the below health provisions (all rumored to be on the chopping block) would create health care jobs, allow research facilities to hire more researchers, and lay the foundation for future economic growth.

As Dean Waldman has suggested, “Health is infrastructure. Health care is the maintenance and repair service for this key element of our productive capacity. As a nation we need to treat the health of our people just like repaving a road – as an investment in our future.”

Rumored Cuts	Stimulative Impact
A provision that allows people 55 and over who are laid off to continue COBRA coverage at a subsidized rate until they’re 65 and eligible for Medicare. A provision that allows the recently unemployed to temporarily qualify for Medicaid coverage.	“Every dollar a state spends on Medicaid pulls new federal dollars into the state—dollars that would not otherwise flow into the state. These new dollars pass from one person to another in successive rounds of spending.” This provision would create more health care jobs and allow Americans to spend their dollars, instead of saving them for a medical emergency.
$1.1 billion for comparative effectiveness research Disability research at the Department of Education.	More research funding creates more research jobs, but it also invests in future savings and lays down the groundwork for substantial health care reform.
Funding for prevention and wellness and programs like smoking cessation, HIV testing, diabetes screening	Harold Pollack points out, “as a mechanism of economic stimulus, hiring nurses and counselors to prevent unintended pregnancies or HIV infection is no less worthy than hiring burly construction workers to build a road. Public health measures are a lot cheaper. They are a hell of a lot less likely to stiff taxpayers for an environmentally dicey boondoggle.”

Comments
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2 Responses to “Senators Propose To Cut Health Care Provisions From Stimulus”

professorj Says:

Healthcare programs have no place in a trillion plus “Stimulus” package. It should be reserved for a separate stand alone bill that won’t be passed in desperation by the Democrat party.

The Stimulus bill should be for jobs tax relief and infrastructure programs only.

Not for new computers to spread medical records around the country. A poor use of the peoples money if your trying to stimulate the economy. It may be good for the future of Socialized Healthcare (which I disagree with) but not in this bill.
February 6th, 2009 at 1:27 pm
Beca Says:

professorj: you seem to have been listening to your Republican obstructionists too much! You say “The Stimulus bill should be for jobs tax relief and infrastructure programs only.” Yet you contradict yourself when you poo poo any program that creates jobs while at the same time benefiting the public health!
The creation of JOBS, any JOB is what is key to stimulating our economy. Those of you who are so narrowminded and don’t read beyond the headlines fail to see that programs providing HIV counseling, for instance, require people to do those JOBS, just like builidng a highway requires people to build that highway! Public health is part of this country’s infrastructure, and people all across the spectrum, from unskilled all the way to highly skilled are loosing their jobs. Programs that create jobs, and also have the added benefit of promoting improved health are equally if not more important and beneficial to our economic recovery than jobs building highways!
Many idiots have also balked at the line item that would retrofit public housing to become more energy eficient. Those naywayers claim that that is a waste! How? are the jobs created to retrofit those housing units the waste? or the fact that people living in those retrofitted housing units will spend less on their utilities, and hence more purchasing other items, or is it just becasue it would be good fo rthe environment that people have a problem?
The ignorance of the Republican and some Democratic Congress people is appaling! These should be impeached for malpractice, because clearly they don’t have the intellectual capacity to comprehend what is happening in this country, nor the ability to put more than one sentence together that does not contain the phrase “tax cuts”.
February 8th, 2009 at 6:14 am