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Policy Update 10/25/21

By Cassidy Heit posted 11-12-2021 17:31

  

Funding for Health Centers in Appropriations and Reconciliation Bills

Last week, the Senate Appropriations Committee released its remaining FY22 appropriations bills, including the Labor, Health, and Human Services, and Education Bill, ahead of the December 3, 2021 deadline to fund the government. The Labor-HHS spending bill includes $1.8 billion for health centers—an increase of $110 million from FY21. Within that funding is a $50 million increase for the Ending the HIV Epidemic Initiative and a $60 million for School-Based Health Centers. The school-based health center funding is further broken down with $30 million for 330 grantees and $30 million for non-330 grantees. The bill also contains direct spending (earmarks) that will benefit health centers. The bill report has language reaffirming the importance of 340B and praising HRSA’s efforts to hold pharmaceutical companies and manufacturers accountable for their actions to undermine the 340B program. However, the bill continues to face obstacles as Republicans oppose the discrepancy between non-defense and defense spending and lack of inclusion of the Hyde amendment, which prevents federal programs from covering abortions. If Congress cannot reach an agreement on the annual appropriations bills, another Continuing Resolution (CR) would have to be passed to keep the government open.

As negotiations continue on the partisan reconciliation Build Back Better (BBB) Act, democrats are looking to cut $1.5 trillion in spending to pass a $2 trillion bill. Among changes to health care provisions of the bill, Democrats are exploring a Medicare dental benefit voucher program instead of a full extension of benefits to reduce the cost. Please take action and ask Members of Congress to keep CHCs' $10B for capital funding and $6.3B in primary care workforce funding in the bill.

 

New Requirement to Provide Good Faith Estimates to Uninsured Patients

Starting January 2022, health centers must provide uninsured patients with a Good Faith Estimate (GFE) of the total out-of-pocket costs they will incur for care within 1 to 3 days of the patient scheduling the care or requesting the GFE. View a preliminary analysis of these new regulatory requirements. The document will be expanded later this month. The requirement was established by an Interim Final Rule (IFR) by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services implementing the “No Surprises Act” enacted in December 2020.


Toolkit on Federal Vaccine Mandates

Colleen Meiman, National Policy Advisor for State & Regional Associations of Community Health Centers, has released an updated toolkit for health centers that consolidates the information and resources available to date around the impending Federal vaccine mandate for health care employers and workers that is expected to be published this month. The toolkit will be updated as additional information becomes available. It contains:

  • A set of FAQs. For many of these questions, there are no answers yet.  (These are being shared with federal administrators to be addressed in the interim final rule.)
  • Links to resources to address vaccine hesitancy specifically among health care workers. 
  • Information around medical exemptions, including how health centers can respond to patient requests.
  • Sample documents from a health center that has already announced a vaccine requirement. 
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