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Tag: health and human services
Xavier Becerra

Biden HHS Nominee Becerra Expected To Restore Reproductive Rights

President-elect Joe Biden has tapped Xavier Becerra, currently California's attorney general, to be his head of Health and Human Services. While much of Becerra's work at HHS will focus on the pandemic, his nomination represents an opportunity to restore reproductive health and abortion rights.

Much of the discussion of the future of abortion is focused on the Supreme Court, thanks to the 6-3 majority of hardline anti-abortion justices. However, there are regulatory steps that Becerra would be able to take that can help increase access to abortion, even as Roe v. Wade is attacked in the courts.

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Xavier Becerra

Biden Selects Medicare Advocate Becerra For HHS Secretary

Former Congressman and current California attorney general Xavier Becerra has been tapped to become president-elect Joe Biden's secretary of health and human services. The New York Times reports that Becerra "became Mr. Biden's clear choice only over the last few days," but had been seemingly off the radar up until the last few days.

The 62-year-old Becerra became California's first Latino attorney general in 2017, succeeding the Senator-elect Kamala Harris. Becerra will have his job cut out for him as, like with everything over the past four years, the HHS has been turned into a swampy racist mess. His job has been further complicated by Trump and the Republican Party's insistence on sabotaging every department, including HHS, all while almost 300,000 Americans have died due to the out of control COVID-19 pandemic in our country.

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Medicare Finances Improve As Health Care Inflation Slows, Trustees Say

Medicare Finances Improve As Health Care Inflation Slows, Trustees Say

By David Lauter, Tribune Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON — Improvements in health care costs have extended the life of Medicare’s main trust fund by four years, the annual report of the Social Security and Medicare trustees said Monday, a further sign of the positive effect of lower medical inflation.

Medicare Part B premiums are expected to remain the same through 2015 because of that improvement, Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell told reporters as the report was released.
Medicare is “considerably stronger than it was just four years ago,” she said.

By contrast, the fund that guarantees Social Security disability payments remains in urgent need of a fix, the trustees warned. As they warned in last year’s report, the trustees said the disability fund will run out of money at the end of 2016, meaning that only 81 percent of disability benefits could be paid unless Congress comes up with a solution.

The status of the larger Old Age and Survivors trust fund remains unchanged, with the balance projected to hit zero in 2033, after which current taxes would cover 77 percent of promised benefits, the report said.

In the short term, the only way to resolve the disability trust fund’s problems will be to change the current rule that allocates taxes between the disability and old-age trust funds, Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew said.

That shift would shore up the disability system at the cost of the making the finances of the retirement system somewhat weaker.

But “there’s probably no other alternative” for solving the disability problem by the end of 2016, Lew said. Congress so far has shown no desire to consider more long-term changes in the disability system.

The disability trust fund is much closer to running out of money than is the old age trust fund in large part because members of the baby-boom generation are currently hitting the age in which people make maximum use of disability insurance, noted Charles Blahous, a former adviser to President George W. Bush who serves as one of the system’s public trustees.

Over time, as baby boomers move into retirement, the main pressure will shift to the retiree system, Blahous said, noting that some of that shift already has begun.

While those problems have remained unchanged, the longer life for Medicare’s Hospital Insurance trust fund, which is now projected to remain solvent through 2030, provides the latest evidence of how the slowdown in the growth of medical costs has improved government finances.

The cost per beneficiary for Medicare has remained flat for two years, noted Robert Reischauer, the former director of the Congressional Budget Office who serves as the system’s other public trustee. The projected size of Medicare’s long-term deficit relative to payrolls has been cut by more than one-third since the trustees’ 2012 report, he noted.

Even with those improvements, however, as the number of retirees continues to grow, Medicare will need either additional revenue or new steps to hold down costs in order to be fiscally stable, Reischauer warned. Moreover, he noted, the current positive trends can’t be guaranteed to continue.

“The sooner lawmakers face reality, the better,” he said.

Lew and Burwell said President Barack Obama’s health care law deserves some of the credit for the improvement in health care costs.

Blahous and Reischauer offered a more cautious assessment.

“We’re probably many years away” from being able to say for sure how much of the improvement has resulted from the Affordable Care Act and how much has stemmed from other factors, Reischauer said.

AFP Photo/ Mandel Ngan

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Obama Seeks $3.7 Billion To Meet ‘Moral Obligation’ At Border

Obama Seeks $3.7 Billion To Meet ‘Moral Obligation’ At Border

By Christi Parsons, Tribune Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama will seek $3.7 billion in emergency funds from Congress to meet the country’s “moral obligation” to care for unaccompanied minors who have flooded in recent months to the southwestern border, White House officials said Tuesday.

Nearly half the money would go to the Department of Health and Human Services for food, housing, and medical care for the tens of thousands of children and teenagers who have arrived at the border, senior administration officials told reporters.

The rest of the money would be aimed at deterring further migrants by strengthening law enforcement, going after smuggling networks that ferry people from Central America and expanding the number of deportation hearings.

The spending plan, nearly double the $2 billion the White House initially said was the minimum amount it would seek, is certain to raise concern among budget hawks in Congress.

The request reflects the president’s dilemma in responding to the estimated 52,000 children who have crossed the border since October, many of them reporting that they’re fleeing violence in their home countries of Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador.

Obama has called the border situation a humanitarian crisis and is under pressure from advocates for immigrants to treat the arriving children humanely. At the same time, White House officials say they need to quickly find a way to stop the flood of new arrivals and send a message to families in Central America that the migrants are not welcome and will be returned to their home countries.

Advisers to the president are mindful of both tasks — and of the varying constituencies paying close attention.

“We’re talking about children who are coming either alone or in the hands of smugglers,” one top White House official said Tuesday, requesting anonymity to speak about the internal administration response. “That’s how the president views it, that’s how the administration is approaching it.

“But while we are focused on making sure we provide proper care,” the official said, “we also intend to apply the law.

“Children who do not qualify for humanitarian relief will be returned, and we are seeking to return them more expeditiously,” the adviser said.

On Monday, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said that most of the recently arrived children would not qualify for humanitarian relief.

An aide to Speaker John Boehner (R-OH), said the House would take a look at the request, and immediately pointed out what his side sees as an omission.

“The speaker still supports deploying the National Guard to provide humanitarian support in the affected areas — which this proposal does not address,” said Boehner spokesman Michael Steel.

In the Senate, Democrats have scheduled a hearing on Thursday to hear from administration officials, including Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson.

Much of the concern among Republicans is about clearing and securing the border. Texas Gov. Rick Perry, whose state has received most of the migrants, has called the Obama response to the crisis “inept.”

White House officials said Tuesday they had invited Perry to meet with the president during a two-day trip to the state this week.

Obama also has run into objections from Democrats to proposals for speeding up deportations of the migrant youths.

White House officials believe that the lengthy hearing process, which can routinely take well over a year, has encouraged families to gamble that their children would be safer coming to the United States. They want to change a law enacted late in the George W. Bush administration that guarantees procedural protections for unaccompanied minors arriving from countries other than Mexico and Canada.

Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has said he has “grave concerns” about giving the White House greater latitude to speed up deportations.

“Let’s not forget these kids are fleeing as a last resort to escape what is too often guaranteed death at the hands of drug cartels and gangs in their countries,” Menendez said Monday.

Obama announced last week that he would make a dual request of Congress, both for the money to stem the tide of immigrants and for the change in the law to deport migrant youths more quickly.
But in the administration pitch on Tuesday, officials focused only on the supplemental spending. Advisers to the president said they still intend to seek a change in the law but that they are starting with the money first.

Photo: Allen Ormond via Flickr

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