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As Congress and the Trump administration work on measures to help workers and key sectors during the COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S. health-care system looks set to get a significant amount of aid.
Here are some of Washington’s proposals for new health-care spending, along with what already has been signed into law:
• Trump administration’s separate request: Separate from a proposed stimulus package that could cost more than $1 trillion while delivering checks to individual Americans and aid to airlines and other hard-hit sectors, the White House this week sent Congress a $46 billion emergency funding request to boost medical care for the military and veterans, as well as better fund production of vaccines and medicines, and reverse budget cuts to the Centers for Disease Control and National Institutes of Health.
• Democratic lawmakers’ proposals: Senate Democrats have their own $750 billion stimulus proposal that includes $400 billion to shore up hospitals and other emergency operations in response to the new coronavirus causing the disease COVID-10. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer on Wednesday stressed that his party would prioritize boosting “public health capacity” over aiding corporate America in negotiations with Republican politicians. “We need masks. We need hospital beds. We need ventilators. We still need testing kits. And so Democrats are proposing a ‘Marshall Plan’ for our public health infrastructure,” the New York Democrat said in a speech on the Senate floor.
• Other Trump moves: The Trump administration’s moves also have included an effort to send a floating naval hospital with 1,000 beds to New York, the Food and Drug Administration giving emergency use authorization to diagnostics makers like Hologic Inc. HOLX, +7.87% so they can begin COVID-19 testing, and an FDA push to expedite testing and possible broader use of some investigational medicines. In addition, the administration said Wednesday that the Defense Department will make available 2,000 ventilators, noting that there is a stockpile of more than 10,000 ventilators. Last week, it highlighted its work with Alphabet GOOG, +1.69% subsidiary Verily Life Sciences on a website to help people find coronavirus testing locations.
• Republican lawmakers’ proposals: Congress may offer financial assistance to hospitals in an effort to ensure they ‘have access to money in terms of borrowing capacity,” Republican Sen. John Barrasso of Wyoming told The Wall Street Journal. He also said Senate Republicans are considering requiring that hospitals stop elective surgeries in order to preserve protective equipment.
• Help in emergency declaration, earlier bills:Trump’s national emergency declaration last week has resulted in the waiver of “most license and use restrictions for providing services via telehealth,” noted Capital Alpha analyst Kim Monk in a recent report to clients. In addition, this week’s relief bill that focused on sick leave and testing also was providing a $45 billion (or 8%) emergency increase in the federal Medicaid matching rate (FMAP) for state Medicaid programs, she said. And an earlier $8.3 billion relief bill was funding efforts to develop a vaccine and assisting local and state governments’ responses.
Now read: Will COVID-19 be a tipping point for telehealth in the U.S.?
