Children’s Health Bid Creates Odd Unions

By KEVIN FREKING

WASHINGTON – The multimillion-dollar lobbying effort to expand a children’s health insurance program is creating some strange bedfellows.

Seniors are joining with doctors. Unions with health providers. The pharmaceutical industry with one of its biggest critics, the advocacy group Families USA. They share the same goal – expanding the State Children’s Health Insurance Program.

A bill moving through the Senate would add $35 billion to the program over the next five years, raising total spending to $60 billion. House leaders will likely call for adding $50 billion to the program.

The Bush administration has recommended a $5 billion increase.

AARP, with its 39 million members, and the American Medical Association, plan to make it uncomfortable for Republican lawmakers to agree with the administration’s position. On Friday, the two organizations announced a lobbying campaign that they said will likely exceed $2 million.

They back the House legislation for two reasons: It would expand health insurance to more children and eliminate a 10 percent cut in reimbursement rates for doctors who see Medicare patients. The cut would kick in Jan. 1, unless Congress intervenes.

The House legislation would pay for those changes by increasing tobacco taxes and lowering payments to insurers who administer health plans for Medicare beneficiaries.

The two groups will spend about $1.3 million for an initial wave of television ads that will run nationwide. The groups also will use direct mailings to ask members to meet with lawmakers during the August recess.

“This is a substantial effort we’re undertaking in order to get this legislation passed,” Bill Novelli, the AARP’s chief executive officer, said Friday.

Just a day earlier, the Partnership for Quality Care, an organization of labor unions and health providers, unveiled an ad in which children, parents and health care providers explain that an increased tobacco tax will not only help more children become insured, but would also decrease smoking.

The group was the first to use ads that clearly advocate for a way to pay for SCHIP’s expansion.

Kate Navarro-McKay, spokeswoman for the partnership, said the ads would run in 13 congressional districts – eight Democratic districts and five Republican districts, over two weeks. The cost: $1.2 million.

The ads were not designed to pressure lawmakers so much as to appeal for bipartisan leadership on the issue. The 13 were chosen because of their potential to be leaders on the issue, she said.

“It’s a message of optimism. We’re appealing to their angel,” Navarro-McKay said.

Health insurers will join the lobbying campaign for SCHIP by running ads that would support the Senate’s call for a tobacco tax increase. They will pay for separate ads designed to dissuade viewers from the approach the House plans to pursue, which is to cut payments to insurers that administer managed care plans under Medicare. That particular program is called Medicare Advantage.

“If it’s anywhere near the ($50 billion) number that we’re hearing it is, it means the end of the Medicare Advantage program,” said Karen Ignagni, president and CEO of America’s Health Insurance Plans. “That means Congress would be asked to vote on one of the largest Medicare cuts in history.”

The television ads coming from Families USA and the trade associations it partnered with won’t be partisan. They won’t favor one legislative chamber’s proposal over the others, but they could have political influence nonetheless.

“We’re trying to influence members of Congress to do the right thing and support the expansion of the SCHIP program,” said Families USA spokesman Dave Lemmon.

Also taking part in the alliance with Families USA and the drug manufacturers are trade associations representing doctors, hospitals and nursing homes.

The trade association representing drug manufacturers, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, has been running television ads for several weeks on cable news shows touting SCHIP. The ads ask viewers to tell Congress to support SCHIP but don’t talk about the size of an expansion. Officials did not disclose the amount spent on the ads.

Another organization that has put big dollars into lobbying for the program but won’t disclose how much is the Children’s Defense Fund. The organization has paid for television ads on CNN and on local television in several states. The organization also has placed print ads in the New York Times and in states where presidential debates are occurring, as well as in move theaters.

The Children’s Defense Fund has also set up its own Web site for a fictional presidential candidate, a young girl named Susie Flynn. The candidate asks people to sign her petition in support of health care for all children. As of Friday, about 20,000 people had signed it.

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On the Net:

Advertisement from the American Medical Association and AARP:

http://www.ama-assn.org/ama/pub/category/14332.html

The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America television ad: http://www.phrma.org/phrma-tv/

Children’s Defense Fund ads:

http://www.childrensdefense.org/healthychild-ads

http://www.electsusie.com/

Partnership for Quality Care:

http://www.facts-online.org/qualitycare/ads.html