There Oughta Be a Law

I grew up smack dab in the middle of Georgia politics. What a show.

My dad was counsel to the state’s legislature, so at a very early age I got used to the dealmaking and horse-trading that goes on behind the political scenes. With that background, on some days I feel informed, on others disillusioned and, lately, more often than I would like, downright disgusted with the gamesmanship.

But as most pundits will tell you, that behind-the-scenes maneuvering is how things get done in politics at the state level — and in Washington. The show is simply on a grander stage in D.C., and the two-steps and the missteps get blown into national headlines. As a matter of fact, I live in Cynthia McKinney’s district. You know, she’s the Georgia representative who, according to the newspapers, conked a Capitol Hill security guard when he stopped her for lack of the proper ID.

The antics don’t end there. Another of Georgia’s representatives has said he won’t sign on to the Hobson-Tanner bill, a measure that would soften the effects of Medicare competitive bidding, because he doesn’t like one of its authors. I was sitting in his office when he made the pronouncement, but since that sounds like something you’d say in elementary school, I felt like I was back in Mrs. Camp’s fifth grade. Well, maybe Miss Chipwood’s fourth, but I’m giving him the benefit of the doubt.

Occasionally, though, among some legislators’ flip attitudes and others’ ignorance of home care’s value to the nation’s elderly, there are bright spots. Those of us who traveled to Washington for AAHomecare’s annual lobbying day June 20 learned of nine.

There are nine physicians in the House of Representatives, and they are so worried about how the Deficit Reduction Act’s oxygen cap will affect Medicare beneficiaries that they got together and introduced a bill to repeal it. They say Congress didn’t consider the “clinical dimensions” of the provision, which caps oxygen rental at 36 months, then transfers equipment ownership to the patient.

“I can’t imagine where the concept came from that older people — people who have difficult times with just taking care of themselves — would be required to take care of oxygen equipment, would be required to own it and would be required to somehow find a way to pay for maintaining it,” explained Rep. Joe Schwarz.

According to Schwarz, an ear, nose and throat surgeon from Michigan who co-authored the bill with Rep. Tom Price, an orthopedic surgeon from (hooray!) Georgia, sometimes you just have to say, “This isn’t right and there oughta be a law.”

Schwarz credits William Deary of Great Lakes Home Health and Hospice in Jackson, Mich., for bringing the DRA’s oxygen cap to his attention. He said he’s hoping the Home Oxygen Patient Protection Act will fix it in this session of Congress. If it doesn’t pass this year, he has vowed to introduce the physicians’ bill again on Day One of the 110th Congress because it’s “just one of those little pieces of good government that has to happen.”

See, that’s the thing about politics and the way it works — in Georgia and Michigan and Washington and even on days when we’re disillusioned — we all get to share our opinions with officials that we elect and, sometimes, they listen.

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