ARTS Act

Mr. President, I rise today with my colleague, Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island, to introduce two bills, S. 2182 and S. 2183, that we hope will have a tremendous impact on the quality and accessibility of mental health care throughout the U.S. Our bills, the Community Mental Health Services Improvement Act and the Community- Based Mental Health Infrastructure Improvement Act, support those programs that serve as an important line of defense against mental illnesses and suicide.

Community mental health programs are the backbone of our mental health system by providing access to vital mental health care services to those in need. Unfortunately, community mental health centers are suffering under tremendous fiscal constraints to provide care in their communities. They operate, usually, on a small budget and with little resources to improve their facilities. Senator Reed and I are introducing these two bills to help community mental health centers obtain the resources necessary to meet their needs.

The goal of the Community Mental Health Services Improvement Act is to provide funding to promote the provision of mental health services locally. The bill would establish a grant program for community mental health programs to provide health care services, screenings, referrals, information technology or facility improvements. The bill also establishes grants for programs that integrate treatment for individuals with a serious mental illness and a co-occurring substance abuse disorder. Grants also would be provided to mental health nonprofit organizations or accredited institutions to establish or expand accredited mental health education and training programs. Finally, this bill will provide grants to community mental health programs for tele-mental health in medically-underserved areas.

The second bill that we are introducing today is one that is very important to mental health programs in my home State of Oregon. Currently, patients are waiting for important mental health care due to lack of building capacity. Our bill, the Community-Based Mental Health Infrastructure Improvements Act, would provide funding for bricks and mortar infrastructure for mental health programs in our communities. There is no Federal funding currently available for construction of community mental health facilities. This bill ensures that individuals with mental illness are not turned away because a facility does not have the resources to keep their building up to code or because a building expansion could not occur to keep up with a growing population because no funds were available.

In developing this legislation, I worked with the Health Resources and Services Administration, HRSA, and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, SAMHSA, to determine how best to make funding available for community mental health programs. This bill would encourage a continuation of this important partnership between SAMHSA, HRSA and States to ensure that competitive grant funding is made available to community mental health programs throughout the country.

We know that mental illness can affect people of any age, of any race and of any income. As a parent with a son who struggled with mental illness, I know all too well the indiscriminate nature of the illness and the frightening statistics of its regular occurrence for those we love. In any given year, more than a quarter of our Nation's adults, 60 million people, suffer from a diagnosable mental disorder, many of whom suffer in silence. Mental disorders are the leading cause of disability for those aged 15-44 in the U.S. and in Canada.

Mental illness is just as deadly and serious as a physical illness. Suicide takes the lives of more than 30,000 people each year, with more than 700,000 attempts. Suicides outnumber homicides three to one each year. People who suffer from mental illness also suffer from much higher rates of other chronic conditions, such as cardiovascular disease. However, unlike heart attacks and strokes, mental illness is not something that we, as a Nation, want to talk about.

In a 2004 report by the Oregon Governor's Mental Health Taskforce, they found that in any given year 175,000 adults and 75,000 children under the age of 18 are in need of mental health services in my home State. Effective treatment exists for most people suffering. Help is out there, and these bills will help ensure that this help can be accessed effectively.

I urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to support the important work of community mental health centers by voting for these bills.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, today I am introducing the Community Health Center Employee Health Coverage Act of 2007, a bill that will help provide community health centers, or CHCs, better access to more affordable health insurance for their employees. I am pleased to have my colleagues Senators Bingaman, Salazar and Sanders join me as original cosponsors on this important proposal.

CHCs form the backbone of the Nation's health care safety net. They provide essential medical services to some of our most vulnerable citizens, including the uninsured and Medicaid and Medicare beneficiaries. In my home State of Oregon, health centers provide over 130 points of access, where upwards of 180,000 individuals receive care each year. Approximately 41 percent of those served are uninsured and 36 percent are on Medicaid, and most all reside in either a rural or economically depressed area. Clearly, CHCs have an important role in ensuring that those who otherwise might be unable to afford health coverage have access to the care they need.

CHCs also serve their patients in a very efficient manner. Studies have shown that care provided Medicaid patients at CHCs costs 30 percent less than care provided in other settings. This is mainly due to a lower number of specialty referrals and fewer overall hospital admissions. CHCs effectively demonstrate how focusing on primary and preventive care can help keep individuals healthier, which ultimately enhances their lives and saves the broader health care system money. Above and beyond the efficiencies CHCs have achieved in service delivery, patients report overwhelming satisfaction for the treatment they are provided. Health care providers across the spectrum would be well-served by emulating CHCs' example of delivering affordable, high- quality health care in an efficient manner.

Given the enormous value CHCs have to the U.S. health care system, I believe Congress should do all it can to support their mission. I commend President Bush's commitment to increasing funding for health center expansion in recent years. I am pleased the administration's request for $180

million in new funding in fiscal year 2007 was included in the Senate's version of the budget resolution. As the appropriations process continues to move forward, I hope that those much-needed funds are ultimately approved by Congress.

The bill I am filing today will compliment the increased funding CHCs have received in recent years. Just like businesses across the nation, health centers are coping with the rising cost of providing health benefit to their employees. Premiums for private health insurance grew by 9.5 percent in 2005, the fifth consecutive year of increases over 9 percent. Because CHCs operate on very limited budgets, it has become more and more difficult for them to absorb these increased costs while continuing to provide affordable health care to their patients.

It is important to note that CHCs rely upon the Federal Government for more than half of their operating revenues. Each year, health centers receive 26 percent of their funding from direct Federal grants and another 36 percent from the Medicaid Program. Because CHCs are predominantly a Federal enterprise, I believe it makes sense for them to be able to reap many of the same benefits of other Federal entities. That is why the bill I am filing today would allow CHCs to purchase more affordable health insurance coverage for their employees through the Federal Employee Health Benefits Program, FEHBP.

Allowing federally funded entities to purchase health coverage through FEHBP is not unprecedented. Employees of Gallaudet University and certain U.S. Department of Agriculture grantees already are able to participate in FEHBP as if they were directly employed by the Federal Government. Considering that CHC providers are already deemed ``Federal employees'' for the purpose of receiving medical liability protection through the Federal Government, it is a logical next step to allow them to purchase health coverage through FEHBP. In doing so, we will be able to provide CHCs much needed security in knowing that their employees will have steady access to affordable health insurance.

I believe that in the long run, CHCs will be able to achieve a great deal of savings by purchasing health coverage for their employees through FEHBP. Premiums for policies purchased through FEHBP consistently grow at a much slower rate than other commercial policies. Every dollar CHCs save in employee benefit costs can be redirected into medical care for the vulnerable populations they serve. Access to FEHBP coverage also may help some CHCs provide health benefits to their employees for the first time. This could help recruit much needed medical personnel in underserved and rural communities. I am hopeful health centers in rural parts of my State will be able to attract the physicians they so desperately need by offering them FEHBP coverage.

There is wide support for CHCs in the Senate, as evidenced by the development of a number of CHC-related measures. Earlier this year, I joined a group of bipartisan Senators in filing the Community Health Center Reauthorization Act, to ensure that vulnerable populations have access to basic health care for the next several years. I hope the Senate's leadership will move these bills quickly through the process, as a sign of appreciation for the important role CHCs play in the U.S. health care system.

I ask unanimous consent that full text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I am pleased to join Senators Casey, Bond, Cantwell, Roberts and Reed in introducing legislation, the Home Health Care Access Protection Act, to prevent the devastating 11.75 percent cut that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, CMS, is planning to make in Medicare home health payment rates over the next 4 years.

Home health has become an increasingly important part of our health care system. The kinds of highly skilled and often technically complex services that our Nation's home health agencies provide have helped to keep families together and enabled millions of our most frail and vulnerable older and disabled persons to avoid hospitals and nursing homes and stay just where they want to be--in the comfort and security of their own homes. Moreover, by helping these individuals to avoid more costly institutional care, they are saving Medicare millions of dollars each year.

That is why I find it so ironic that the Medicare home health benefit is once again under attack.

The House version of the SCHIP reauthorization bill proposed cutting Medicare home health spending by $2.6 billion over 5 years, and the Senate may soon be considering similar cuts.

To make matters worse, CMS has proposed additional administrative cuts that are estimated to total more than $6 billion over the next 5 years. If allowed to go forward, this ``double whammy'' for home care will result in

cuts in excess of $8.6 billion over 5 years from a program that costs less than $15 billion a year. This simply is not right, and it certainly is not in the best interest of our Nation's seniors who rely on home care to keep them out of hospitals, nursing homes and other institutions.

The administrative cuts proposed by CMS are based on the assertion that home health agencies have intentionally ``gamed the system'' by claiming that their patients have conditions of higher clinical severity than they actually have in order to receive higher Medicare payments. This unfounded allegation of ``case mix creep'' is based on what CMS contends to be an increase in the average clinical assessment ``score'' of home health patients over the last few years.

In fact, there are very real clinical and policy explanations for why the average clinical severity of home care patients' health conditions may have increased over the years. For example, the incentives built into the hospital DRG reimbursement system have led to the faster discharge of sicker patients. Advances in technology and changes in medical practice have also enabled home health agencies to treat more complicated medical conditions that earlier could only be treated in hospitals, nursing homes, or inpatient rehabilitation facilities.

These administrative cuts are proposed to go into effect on January l. This would be devastating to home health agencies in Maine and across the Nation, particularly given that there is no evidence of intentional ``gaming'' on the part of home health agencies to warrant such a severe financial penalty.

Moreover, CMS has not made public any of the details of the research method, data and findings they used to justify the planned cuts, making it impossible for Congress or the public to evaluate the reliability or the validity of its actions.

What is of most concern to me, however, is that this unfair penalty is being assessed across the board, even for home health agencies that showed a decrease in their clinical assessment scores. If an individual home health agency is truly gaming the system, CMS should target that one agency, not penalize everyone.

The fact is that the Medicare home health benefit has already taken a larger hit in spending cuts over the past 10 years than any other Medicare benefit. In fact, home health as a share of Medicare spending has dropped from 8.7 percent in 1997 to 3.2 percent today, and is projected to decline to 2.6 percent of Medicare spending in 2015.

This downward spiral in home health spending began with provisions in the Balanced Budget Act of 1997, which resulted in a 50 percent cut in Medicare home health spending by 2001--far more than the Congress intended or the Congressional Budget Office projected.

And home health spending continues to be much lower than CBO projections. In 2000, the CBO projected that home health spending in 2006 would total $21.1 billion under the new home health prospective payment system. The actual total expenditures for home health last year were $13.2 billion. If home health agencies were engaging in the kind of widespread ``upcoding'' that CMS has alleged, home health spending would be exceeding CBO's projections. In fact, home health spending has been far less than expected.

Home health care has consistently proven to be a compassionate and cost-effective alternative to institutional care. Additional deep cuts will be completely counterproductive to our efforts to control overall health care costs. They will also place the quality of home health services at risk, particularly given ever-rising transportation, staffing, and technology costs. Cuts of this magnitude could leave some providers with no alternative but to reduce the number of home health visits or patient admissions, which would ultimately threaten seniors' access to care and clinical outcomes. Or they could cause them to close their doors altogether.

The legislation that we are introducing today will block the ``case mix creep'' cuts that were proposed by CMS as part of the final home health prospective payment system regulation in August. It will also establish a reliable and transparent process that the Department of Health and Human Services must use to justify that payment rate cuts are needed to account for improper changes in ``case mix scoring.'' A companion bill to our legislation is being introduced in the House by Representative Jim McGovern.

The Home Health Care Access Protection Act of 2007 will help to ensure that our seniors and disabled Americans continue to have access to the quality home health services they deserve, and I encourage all of my colleagues to sign on as cosponsors.

Mr. President, today I rise to introduce the Medicare Mental Health Prescription Drug Access Act of 2007-- legislation to provide our Nation's seniors and individuals with disabilities access to the mental health drugs that best meet their needs.

As many of my colleagues are aware, nearly one out of four Americans, 58 million people, will experience a mental illness during any given year, and a large number of them will be senior citizens and individuals with disabilities.

For far too long, mental illness has been shrouded in fear, misunderstanding and stigma. I believe it is long past time for us to address the inequitable treatment of mental illness in our broader health care system. Mental health parity is a critical part of the solution. We must fulfill the intent of the 1996 mental health parity law and expand the definition of parity to include deductibles, co- payments, coinsurance, out-of-pocket expenses, as well as scope and duration of treatment.

However, parity alone is not a panacea to the problem of treating mental illness in this country. We must improve the range of mental health illnesses and treatment options covered by health plans, particularly for children and seniors.

This year in the Senate, we have taken a major step toward improving

access to mental health services for children by passing the Children's Health Insurance Program, CHIP, Reauthorization Act, H.R. 976, not once, but twice. Among the many important provisions included in this legislation, which I co-authored, is a provision that requires the private health insurance plans that administer CHIP to provide mental health services for children that are equivalent to the coverage provided for physical illnesses. In other words, we require full mental health parity for children enrolled in CHIP.

I still believe that we must do more to ensure that all children have the broadest health care coverage possible for mental health screening and treatment, along the lines of what is provided to children enrolled in Medicaid through the Early Periodic Screening Diagnosis and Treatment, EPSDT, program. However, we have taken a significant step in the right direction toward addressing the mental health needs of our nation's children by passing the CHIP reauthorization bill.

Unfortunately, the same is not true for our nation's seniors and individuals with disabilities. We haven't done nearly enough to address their mental health needs. In fact, we have taken a step backwards in the mental health coverage provided to Medicare participants, particularly those that are dually eligible for Medicare and Medicaid.

Many of my colleagues will recall that the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement and Modernization Act of 2003 excluded certain classes of medications from the newly-created Medicare prescription drug program. Among the prescription drugs excluded were two important classes of mental health drugs, benzodiepines and barbiturates, central nervous system depressants which have multiple clinical benefits.

Benzodiazepines and barbiturates are used to help seniors and individuals with disabilities who are dealing with a variety of conditions including anxiety, depression, insomnia, panic disorders, muscle spasms and seizures. Despite being some of the oldest and most effective medications for the treatment of mental illness, benzodiazepines and barbiturates are currently unavailable to most seniors and individuals with disabilities enrolled in Medicare. That is just wrong.

Patients who have found success with benzodiazepines and barbiturates are reluctant to change prescriptions because of the potential side effects or the understandable fear that their conditions might return. Often, there is also an increased cost associated with alternative medications, but the efficacy of these ``replacement'' drugs may actually be less than benzodiazepines and barbiturates. So, why should we require MediCare participants to use prescription drugs that could cost more without offering any greater clinical benefit? I don't believe we should. Medicare participants deserve affordable access to the prescription medications that are best suited to treat their conditions.

Many of my colleagues may be wondering why these two classes of prescription drugs were excluded from the Medicare prescription drug program in the first place. They were excluded because of an inappropriate application of existing Medicaid law to the Medicare prescription drug program. The 1990 law that established the Medicaid prescription drug rebate program gave state Medicaid agencies the OPTION to exclude barbiturates and benzodiazepines from their drug formularies. Even though no states have excluded these medications from their Medicaid formularies, the Medicare law makes this exclusion MANDATORY for seniors and individuals with disabilities.

It is unfair to restrict access to prescribed medications that have been proven to be safe and effective in the treatment of mental illnesses and other conditions that commonly affect seniors and the disabled. That is why I am introducing this important piece of legislation today, and I urge my colleagues to support it.

We know that mental illness is treatable, and treatment can help people to live healthy, productive lives. Yet, our Nation's focus on mental health has continued to take a backseat to our focus on physical health even though the two are interrelated. We must act now to bring an end to the silent epidemic of mental illness in our country.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, today I am introducing the FIT Kids Act. That first word, FIT, is an acronym for ``Fitness Integrated with Teaching''. The FIT Kids Act encourages schools to provide children with quality physical education that can help them lead healthier lives.

Since the 1970s, the incidence of obesity has more than doubled for preschool children aged 2-5 years and for young people aged 12-19 years, and has more than tripled for children aged 6-11 years. There are many reasons of this public health crisis, and addressing this crisis will require multiple solutions as well. One critical place to start is in our schools. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has found that fewer than 10 percent of our public schools at all levels offer daily physical education or its equivalent for the entire school year for all students.

The FIT Kids Act would amend the No Child Left Behind Act to support quality physical education for all public school children through grade 12, and ensure they receive important health and nutritional information. As a senior member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, I have been working with Chairman Kennedy and my other colleagues to reauthorize the No Child Left Behind Act in a way that improves on existing law, and gives schools and educators the resources they need to succeed.

It is truly alarming to see the discrepancies in achievement between children in the United States and children abroad. Here in the U.S., we have a wide and persistent achievement gap that is leaving behind children of color, young people from disadvantaged backgrounds, and children with disabilities. I believe that the No Child Left Behind Act gives us a framework to reduce, and hopefully close, this achievement gap to ensure that children from all walks of life are achieving at high levels. I believe that we can and will reauthorize the No Child Left Behind Act in a way that preserves its essential reforms and continues the progress we have made over the nearly 6 years since the act became law.

Unfortunately, despite the law's lofty goals, many educators have come to see it as a burden and a hindrance to effective classroom practices. I admit I share many of their concerns. I am particularly concerned about reports of imbalances and distortions that have come about as various States and the Federal Government have pushed for higher standards and greater accountability. Earlier this year, the Center on Education Policy, here in Washington,

released a study showing that, as a result of NCLB, many school districts have cut back on the time spent teaching subjects other than math and reading.

I am especially concerned by the finding that time spent on physical education has dropped by 9 percent, and recess by 6 percent. A new elementary school in Atlanta was actually built without a playground! This is just plain wrong-headed and short-sighted for two big reasons: one, we are fighting a childhood obesity epidemic of frightening proportions. Two, as any teacher or parent knows, kids have got to have time to play and burn off energy if they are going to be in a proper frame of mind to learn.

This legislation will provide parents with information on the time and resources devoted to giving their children a quality physical education. Specifically, the bill will amend the State, local education agency, and school report cards to include measures of physical education tied to nationally recognized guidelines and standards. It is important to note, however, that this legislation will not amend the school accountability process to include measures of physical education. However, by including this new information on report cards we will give parents the data they need in order to assess whether their children are receiving an appropriate physical education.

In addition, the bill promotes teacher professionalism in the field of physical education in order to promote healthy lifestyles and physical activity, and thereby to boost students' readiness to learn. The bill promotes physical activity in after-school programs. It amends the school counseling program to take into account students' emotional and physical wellbeing. It supports efforts to train parents to encourage healthy behaviors and physical activity.

Finally, this legislation authorizes research into the ways physical activity can be incorporated into all aspects of the school day, as well as research into the impact of physical activity on students' ability to learn, and into the best ways to measure student progress in increasing physical activity.

I am pleased that this bill is strongly supported by the American Heart Association, the National Parent Teacher Association, the American School Counselor Association, YMCA of the USA, National Association for Sport and Physical Education, the Campaign to End Obesity, and many other leading organizations in the fields of education and health.

The FIT Kids Act shines a spotlight on children's heath and how our schools can play a greater role in teaching our children healthy behaviors. As we move forward in reauthorizing the No Child Left Behind Act, we cannot neglect the importance of proper physical education. Students should be learning healthy behaviors and the importance of physical activity, and why these lessons will be important throughout their lives. The FIT Kids Act provides the framework to accomplish this. I urge my colleagues to support this bill.

Mr. President, I rise today to reintroduce the Family Asthma Act, legislation that would improve our federal government's response to this epidemic. The number of people with asthma has more than doubled in the past twenty years, and today, more than 32 million Americans, including more than 9 million children, have been diagnosed with asthma. By 2020, asthma is expected to strike 1 in 14 Americans and 1 in 5 families.

While deaths and hospitalizations from asthma are decreasing, the disease has a disproportionate impact among racial and ethnic minority populations. The emergency department visit rate for blacks seeking asthma treatment was 350 percent higher than that of the rates of whites, while the hospitalization rate for blacks with asthma was 240 percent higher than the rate of whites with asthma. Puerto Rican populations are 95 percent more likely to be diagnosed with asthma than white populations. Women are also disproportionately impacted, with asthma hospitalization rates approximately 35 percent higher among females than males.

Our legislation seeks to reverse these disparities. It would set up pilot projects to increase patient self-management, and allow for a better understanding of the environmental factors, like indoor and outdoor air pollution, that contribute to asthma. It would improve our surveillance and education efforts through the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, so that we identify and target interventions to the populations with the highest burdens of asthma. And it would train providers to recognize the links between environmental pollution and asthma, in order to better treat and manage this condition.

This legislation contains the following components: it establishes pilot projects to improve asthma management and increase our knowledge of the environmental and genetic links to asthma. The Family Asthma Act establishes a $10 million annual grant program through the National Institutes of Health to establish pilot research projects that assist patients with asthma management. These projects will also allow scientists to engage in research on the environmental and genetic factors that contribute to severe, persistent asthma.

It directs our Government's asthma coordinating body to review and make recommendations for future directions in research and interventions. This legislation directs the National Asthma Education and Prevention Program to review current private and public sector efforts in combating asthma, and make recommendations as to how to strengthen those efforts in order to reduce the impact of this disease upon our health care system.

It increases funding to the CDC for education and surveillance. The bill provides $10 million annually to increase CDC's educational efforts, with state, local and nonprofit partners, to raise awareness of both asthma and ways to manage the disease. It also increases the scope of CDC's asthma surveillance activities to include hospitalization data, so as to better measure the impact of asthma at both the national and local level.

It creates a fellowship program to train providers about the links between the environment and asthma. Through this bill, the National Institutes of Environmental Health Sciences will set up a $2 million fellowship program to

help a broad spectrum of health care providers learn about the links between the environment and asthma, and increase their ability to address those links in clinical practice and asthma management programs.

I look forward to working with my colleagues in the Senate to move this legislation forward and address the growing incidence of asthma in our country.

I ask unanimous consent that a letter of support be printed in the Record.