BUFFALO, N.Y. — If you think getting a bill through Congress is easy, just check the steps involved in securing legislation that would create a separate Medicare benefit for complex rehab.
According to Don Clayback, the steering committee working on the benefit is "making progress in accordance with our 2011 plan." Draft legislation has been written, clinical groups including the American Occupational Therapy Association (AOTA) and the American Physical Therapy Association (APTA) have signed on to support the initiative, and an independent economic research firm is working on the estimated cost for the legislation.
But there's still a lot of work to do. In an update sent this morning, Clayback, steering committee chair and executive director of NCART, outlined the hurdles left to jump in the process:
"1) Obtain bipartisan commitment to introduce the needed legislation from two members of Congress (one Democrat and one Republican). This is our immediate focus and will involve discussions on the details of our issues, the draft language, the related costs, and the potential offsets to allow the bill to be budget-neutral.
2) Next, the draft legislation (with any desired modifications) will be sent to the Office of the Legislative Counsel in Congress so that it can be reviewed, edited, and prepared for formal introduction.
3) Once the legislative language is finalized, it will be formally introduced and assigned a bill number. This is a critical achievement, because once we have a bill introduced we can then most effectively engage all stakeholders in grassroots efforts focused on that specific bill number to garner additional cosponsors.
4) Upon introduction the bill will be referred to a committee of jurisdiction. There it will be subject to additional review.
5) At some point (before introduction or after introduction) the bill will be forwarded to the Congressional Budget Office for their official scoring of the projected financial cost over a 10-year period.
6) Finally, with enough congressional support, our legislation will be attached to a larger bill and be brought to the floor of the House and/or Senate for a vote. It needs to be passed in both chambers and then sent on to the president for signing. Once passed and signed we have accomplished our legislative objective and can move on to the implementation."
Once legislation is passed, Clayback explained in the udpate, "we will be working with CMS on the implementation of the legislation and the development of related policies and other changes."
Said Clayback, "At the start of this year we stated our efforts in 2011 need to be viewed as a marathon, not a sprint. So stay hydrated and pace yourselves."
See the NCART or NRRTS websites for more information on the separate benefit initiative.