HHS accelerates grants to create health care jobs

[cbayer]

Source: Government Executive

On the day the U.S. Supreme Court announced it will hear constitutional challenges to the 2010 health care reform law, Health and Human Services Department leaders rolled out a $1 billion grant program designed to identify innovations that both improve medical care and create jobs.

HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius on Monday took her turn invoking the Obama administration's autumn We Can't Wait theme, using a press conference to announce the Health Care Innovation Challenge while noting that "in recent weeks, Congress has failed to act on the full jobs agenda, so we will continue to do what we can."

The new competition, Sebelius said, will award grants of $1 million to $30 million over three years to innovators who demonstrate promising new ways to deliver high-quality health care and lower costs. Health care jobs "are key to sparking the economy" she added, and the grants will help the health care community evaluate a "menu of new options for doctors and hospitals so they can provide the care they want to provide and that patients want to receive."

The grants for participants in Medicare, Medicaid and the Childrens Health Insurance Program will give priority to projects that allow health care providers to rapidly hire, train and deploy new types of workers.
The unveiling of the program was not planned around the Supreme Court's long-awaited Monday announcement that it will rule on the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act by June 2012, Sebelius said. But she said she is pleased and confident of a favorable high court ruling, given President Obama's request for quick consideration and the majority of courts that have upheld the law's individual mandate to purchase health insurance.

Read more: http://www.govexec.com/dailyfed/1111/111411cc2.htm

[postulater]

1. Health care jobs? Hah! Medicare is cutting fees 27% and docs are gonna hire?

Don't think so.