Working through marathon sessions that lasted to nearly dawn, the 2009 Iowa General Assembly finally adjourned over the weekend of April 25.

The 2009 session was marked by contentious debates on a variety of issues, some of which passed and many of which did not. Highlights of the year of interest to the Iowa hospital community included:

• Restoration of the proposed 2.3 percent cut to hospital inpatient Medicaid payments. Coupled with the federal match, restoration of this cut means approximately $6 million annually for Iowa’s Prospective Payment System hospitals.
• Passage of IHA-sponsored legislation making a variety of code changes for Iowa’s public hospitals.
• Passage of health care reform legislation that creates a process for future funding of an increased physician residency in Iowa as well as legislation that creates a mechanism for future payment of nonparticipating hospitals within the IowaCare program.
• Preservation of the ability of hospital maintenance workers to carry out routine plumbing work within the facility.
• Failure of labor initiatives such as “fair share,” open-scope collective bargaining, employee choice of physician in workers’ compensation cases and setting prevailing wages for public construction projects to gain legislative approval.
• Failure of bills seeking to change Iowa’s Certificate of Need laws, prescribe charity care levels for hospitals and setting a health care whistleblower mandate.

Thanks go out to our Iowa hospital advocates

Thanks to the hard work of hospital advocates across the state, IHA had another successful legislative session. Hundreds of personal phone calls and visits, coupled with more than 15,000 e-mails going into the General Assembly on a variety of health care topics, helped push the message that hospitals have an essential role in the Iowa economy and quality of life.

Stay tuned for continued policy coverage

In the interim, IHA will be posting state and federal policy information on the IHA Policy Blog and looks forward to receiving comments from readers on the topics. As always, work is never done, and IHA is already working on the 2010 Legislative Agenda so stay tuned… More to come!

[Iowa House of Representatives Chamber photo courtesy of Iowa House Democrats]

Twitter, the microblogging website that allows users to post status updates of 140 characters or less, is no longer a portal just for  technology geeks or internet stars. News agencies, nonprofits, celebrities and television shows are joining in droves, as is evident by the microblogging service generating 4 million unique visitors in the U.S. to its website in February 2009.

However, long before you could follow The Ellen Show or Ashton Kutcher on Twitter, U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley was posting (also called “tweeting”) with the service while at events in Iowa (see Grassley’s first tweet from November 26, 2007).

Tweets from the Senator encompass what he is up to during the day and read as if he was holding a conversation one-on-one with his audience.

Whether it be “Ran in 45degree weather Tues morn. On way frigid iowa. Don’t LOL. TTYL” or “Just finishd hour long meeting in Rep caucus w Obama. He was recd well. Good discusion on stimulus and recession,” Grassley uses the 140-character platform to inform his 4,900+ followers about current issues, upcoming appearances and his role as a representative of the state of Iowa. Read more

Building on the discussions held at the White House’s health care summit, President Obama announced a series of regional forums to be held across the country.  Iowa, along with California, Michigan, North Carolina and Vermont, has been selected to host a forum and continue the discussion on health care reform.

At the health care reform summit last week, President Obama told attendees, “The time for reform is now and these regional forums are some of the key first steps toward breaking the stalemate we have been stuck in for far too long.  The forums will bring together diverse groups of people all over the country who have a stake in reforming our health care system and ask them to put forward their best ideas about how we bring down costs and expand coverage for American families.”

The forum will be hosted by Iowa Governor Chet Culver and, according to a statement released by the White House, the dialogue will include “participants ranging from doctors to patients to providers to policy experts.  They will be open conversations with everyday Americans, local, state and federal elected officials both Democrat and Republican, as well as senior Obama administration officials.”

The Iowa event will be held in Des Moines on March 23 and is tentatively scheduled to be located at the Polk County Convention Complex.  The governor’s office has indicated that 200-500 individuals representing a wide variety of perspectives on the issue will be invited to attend.  The conference will begin with a video recorded by the president, a summary of the findings from the Health Care Community Discussions that took place in December and an overview of the discussion that took place at the White House Forum on Health Reform.

“The governor is thrilled that the White House has chosen Iowa to host one of these important health care meetings,” Culver spokesman Troy Price said.  “So many Iowans and Americans face challenges to accessing quality, affordable health care every single day.  Now they will be given an opportunity share those concerns.”

Iowa Senators Tom Harkin and Chuck Grassley have both indicated they plan to attend the forum.

A live video stream of the forum is intended to be available on the newly created Health and Human Services Web site at www.healthreform.gov so that the public can be involved in what is being discussed.

Iowa Senator Tom Harkin has announced plans to visit four Iowa cities this weekend to meet with community leaders and discuss the billions of health care dollars included in the recently passed economic stimulus package.  According to a released statement, Harkin will discuss how the legislation “prevents health care loss and ensures states can prevent eligibility cuts for Medicaid and the State Children’s Health Insurance Program…strengthens the health care workforce and invests in community health centers.”

Senator Harkin is involved with the ongoing health care reform efforts in Washington D.C. and in November he accepted an invitation by Senator Edward Kennedy (D-MA), chairman of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions to lead a working group tasked with crafting the prevention and public health components of health care reform.

Senator Harkin will be hosting meetings at the following times and locations:

March 13

• 4:00 pm
  Mt. Mercy College
  Flaherty Community Room, Basile Hall
  1330 Elmhurst Drive NE
  Cedar Rapids, Iowa 52402

March 14

• 9:30 am
  St. Ambrose University
  Rogalski Center – Third Floor
  518 W. Locust Street
  Davenport, Iowa 52803
• 12:30 pm
  Broadlawns Medical Center
  Hunsaker Conference Room – Fourth Floor
  1801 Hickman Road
  Des Moines, Iowa 50314

March 15

• 1:15 pm
  Community Health Center
  300 West Broadway #6
  Council Bluffs, Iowa 51503

The Obama administration held a summit last week, officially titled the “White House Forum on Health Reform,” involving 150 participants including members of Congress, hospitals, doctors, business groups, insurance companies, consumer organizations and labor unions.

The summit, structured similarly to the economic summit held the week prior, was an opportunity to bring groups together and begin discussing the initial plans to overhaul the nation’s health care system.

The president provided opening and closing remarks to attendees who spent the remainder of the day in five break-out sessions focusing on a variety of topics, including health care cost, quality, coverage and access.

During his remarks, Obama notably indicated some flexibility on the reform plan he introduced during the campaign saying, “I put forward a plan for health care reform.  I thought it was an excellent plan.  But I don’t presume that it was a perfect plan or that it was the best possible plan.”

Obama indicated that there is room for discussion on the specifics, and doesn’t believe that an entirely public nor entirely private reform plan will work and said, “If there is a way of getting this done, where we’re driving down costs and people are getting health insurance at an affordable rate…and we could do that entirely through the market, I’d be happy to do it that way.  If there was a way of doing it that involved more government regulation and involvement, I’m happy to do it that way as well.”

President Obama had said that he would like Congress to act on health care reform by the end of this year.

Details on upcoming health reform regional forums are available on the newly launched HealthReform.gov website, managed by the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services.