Notebook Page 3 April 2015

Things started to heat back up in Lansing this week with lawmakers making their way back from a two-week long spring break. What is ahead of them from here until summer? Budget work is the number one issue on everyone's mind.

Let’s review the happenings from this first week back from break:

House:

The House Education Committee took testimony on Senate Bill 139, which would allow for bake sale fundraisers in schools. Under current federal regulations, if items that are being sold are not within nutritional standards, they are not allowed to be sold. There are exceptions for items that are prepackaged like Boy Scout popcorn or Girl Scout cookies.

ACS CAN is a member of the Healthy Kids Healthy Michigan (HKHM) coalition that supports better nutritional standards, better health education classes and more activity for kids while at school. We joined HKHM in opposition of the legislation, since it would weaken the nutrition standards in schools, with the hope of seeing substantial changes to the legislation . We are looking forward to working with HKHM and others to change the bill moving forward.

Senate:

The Senate were working on other issues this week that were tied in to Auto No-Fault reform. 

Budget:

The Senate Appropriations Committee started to move its budget bills this week. The Department of Community Health Budget is scheduled for action on Tuesday. The House has scheduled its appropriations committee for every day they are in Lansing this week (Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday). We will be watching the movements of the budget with this hurdle over and several more to go.

Federal:

One federal note from our last notebook entrance. House Resolution 2 was passed by the Senate and was sent to the President for his signature. This is huge for us since it allowed for re-authorization of funding for Federally Qualified Health Centers until 2017. This is important because now the federal government will keep funding these centers that provide health care to those who are undeserved. 

As always, if you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact me at andrew.schepers@cancer.org.

Notebook Page 1 March 2015

Welcome to the new ACS CAN Government Relations Notebook. The purpose of having this is to provide updates on the happenings at the State and Federal levels that affect our fight against cancer. It is my hope to have a weekly report that will go across most platforms during the legislative session and a monthly update during the summer months.

First I want to start out by introducing myself. I have been involved in Michigan State Government and politics for the past decade. I started out as an intern with Representative Kevin Green, who was in Michigan's 77th district, then was hired to work full time by Representative Kevin Elsenheimer, who was in Michigan's 105th district. While with both Elsenheimer and Green I did a majority of constituent services, caucus staff development, and campaign work.

I was approached by the Michigan State Medical Society to join their government relations team in 2009. At MSMS I did a flurry of activities including policy analysis and development, communications throughout the MSMS community, and lobbying work within the legislature and the Governor's administration. Once I learned of the opportunity with ACS CAN I jumped knowing that it would be a wonderful opportunity to broaden my horizons and work for such a great team, and here I am today. So now on to the news:

State:

Over the past several weeks the Governor, along with the legislature, has been working on putting together the State's budget for the coming fiscal year. We were excited to see that the Governor in his budget proposal provided the $500K for cancer prevention programming that the Department of Community Health received last year. This year we want to continue that momentum and move us into an area where more funding can be added to the budget line, asking for an additional $500K. Providing funding for these crucial programs will only make the move of the State to implement the Healthy Michigan Program stronger. These two programs can work in concert together but it depends on the lawmakers to make it a priority.

E-cigarettes are once again making their way into the spotlight in Michigan politics. This past week Senator Rick Jones introduced Senate Bill 231 which was the package that ACS CAN and others adamantly fought against. SB 231 would place E-cigarettes in a classification of their own since the nicotine is not delivered by smoking tobacco, supporters of the legislation say that it's not tobacco. We say why does the delivery system matter, you are still getting the harmful effects from smoking tobacco by using an e-cigarette. This is an issues that we will be engaged with throughout the term.

Federal:

On the federal level there is an issue that we are paying attention to as this moment being interested in where it goes. The House of Representatives this past week passed HR 2 which would provide for several reforms in Medicare and Medicaid. The largest though was the fix to the Sustainable Growth Rate, the formula used to provide payment for physicians in Medicare, was a part of the legislation. The bill would now move physician into a quality reporting system where if physicians would meet certain quality standards they would receive a higher reimbursement. This could be great for patient care in the future.

Also attached to HR 2 is a funding extension for Community Health Centers with tie in to Federally Qualified Health Centers in Michigan. Michigan currently has 36 CHC's and FQHC's along with 5 that are State look a likes.  The provisions added in the bill would continue funding through 2017.

We will be tracking these issues and others in the coming months. If you have any questions, feel free to e-mail me at andrew.schepers@cancer.org.