“CHRONIC” – Senate Bill 870 Passes Senate With Bi-Partisan Support – Is It Significant?

On Tuesday, September 26, 2017, at the same time that there was much sound and fury, but no vote, on the Graham-Cassidy Senate effort to repeal Obamacare, the U.S. Senate quietly approved on a voice vote Senate Bill 870, titled “Creating High-Quality Results and Outcomes Necessary to Improve Chronic Care Act of 2017″or “CHRONIC Care” for short.  

The vote sends the bill on to the House for any next step of action. In press releases after the vote, sponsors welcomed Senate passage as a sign of bipartisan support for “strengthening and improving health outcomes for Medicare beneficiaries living with chronic conditions,” noting:  

“This bill marks an important step towards updating and strengthening Medicare’s guarantee of comprehensive health benefits for seniors,” said [Oregon’s Senator Ron Wyden,] the ranking Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee. “Medicare policy cannot stand idly by while the needs of people in the program shift to managing multiple costly chronic diseases,” Wyden said. “This bill provides new options and tools for seniors and their doctors to coordinate care and makes it less burdensome to stay healthy.”

The bill that passed the Senate on Tuesday was co-sponsored by Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), as well as Sens. Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.) and Mark Warner (D-Va.)

Initial review of the modestly ambitious bill shows that if passed in full by the House, the legislation would extend by 2 years the “Independence at Home Demonstration program,” now in its 5th year, with funding otherwise set to run out at the end of September.  Additional provisions address “telehealth” services and direct studies or accounting reports on Medicare Advantage plans.  

The Independence at Home Demonstration program seems worthy of additional operation and tracking, as at least on paper it trends towards what most people seem to want, i.e., better health care access while still at home, rather than waiting for facility-based services.  For more on preliminary outcomes from the Demonstration program, see “Corrected Performance Results” from Year 2, released in January 2017.  

On the other hand, it is difficult to resist the irony that a great deal of work seemed to go into crafting the acronym, “CHRONIC,” which also happens to be the street name for “very high-quality marijuana.”    

 My special thanks to my newest Dickinson Law colleague, Professor Matthew Lawrence, who comes to us with fabulous experience in health care law, for helping identify this active piece of legislation.