In June, Senators Tom Udall www.tomudall.senate.gov and Martin Heinrich www.heinrich.senate.gov introduced a bill to improve the health and economies of border communities and to strengthen national security. The “Border Health Security Act of 2015” would strengthen binational collaboration to address border health issues and establish grant programs to improve public health infrastructure and infectious disease monitoring.
The bill would also authorize $7 million per year for border grants and operations, and address high rates of disease and inadequate hazard preparedness infrastructure along the northern and southern borders. The goal is to address priorities and recommendations as outlined by the U.S-Mexico Border Health Commission www.borderhealth.org and the U.S. Canada Pan Border Public Health Preparedness Council www.pbphpc.org.
Grant funding would address issues involving infectious disease testing, monitoring, and surveillance, public health infrastructure, health conditions with high prevalence, medical and health services research, healthcare infrastructure, health disparities, environmental health, epidemiology and health research, and workforce training and development.
Grant funding would also be used to reestablish the Early Warning Infectious Disease Surveillance (EWIDS) program and to fund Border Infectious Disease Surveillance (BIDS) projects.
In another legislative move, Representative Mike Thompson http://mikethompson.house.gov joined with other Representatives on June 17th to introduced the “Furthering Access to Stroke Telemedicine (FAST) Act” to expand access to stoke telemedicine also called telestroke treatment in Medicare. Similar legislation has been introduced in the Senate.
On July 7th, Representative Mike Thompson http://mikethompson.house.gov with other bipartisan sponsors introduced a new version of the Medicare Health Parity Act. This bill and the bipartisan Telehealth Enhancement Act introduced by Representative Gregg Harper http://harper.house.gov features a variety of strategic telehealth coverage improvements for Medicare and other programs strongly supported by the American Telemedicine Association (ATA).
In addition, legislation related to the military and veterans was introduced by Scott Peters http://scottpeters.house.gov on June 10th. The “21st Century Care for Military and Veterans Act” (H.R 2725) would permit the use of communication systems to provide service to current and former member of the uniformed services and dependents under TRICARE administered by DOD and for veterans receiving health benefits under plans administered by the Veterans Administration.