Grassley Talks Health Care And Re-election At Mahaska Health Partnership
Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley fields questions from the staff at Mahaska Health Partnership on Thursday afternoon.
Oskaloosa, Iowa – Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley is in the middle of a 99-county tour, and is facing a re-election bid challenge for 2016.
This past week, Grassley stopped by Mahaska Health Partnership as part of the 99-county tour, now dubbed the ‘Full Grassley’ by Republican Presidential Candidates.
Staff members from MHP offered up questions to the senator, ranging from mental health to reimbursement for Medicaid. Jay Christensen, CEO of Mahaska Health Partnership, asked Grassley what he sees for the future of the 340B Drug Pricing Program.
The 340B Drug Discount Program is a U.S. federal government program created in 1992 that requires drug manufacturers to provide outpatient drugs to eligible health care organizations/covered entities at significantly reduced prices.
“It’s got a good future”, responded Grassley. Grassley had questioned the program during the summer of 2015 in response to a Government Accounting Officer report that stated “the unnecessary spending on either more drugs or more expensive drugs has negative implications for the Medicare program as well as leading to increased cost-sharing and higher part B premiums for beneficiaries.”
Grassley said that “the maintenance of facilities in rural America” is something that has been ongoing “for a long period of time”. Supplementing the hospitals beyond the reimbursement of normal Medicare plans “with things that help keep healthcare in rural America. The critical access hospital program, which is probably now 20 years old, would be one example.”
Mahaska Health Partnership is a critical access hospital. A Critical Access Hospital (CAH) is a hospital certified under a set of Medicare Conditions of Participation (CoP), which are structured differently than the acute care hospital CoP. Some of the requirements for CAH certification include: having no more than 25 inpatient beds; maintaining an annual average length of stay of no more than 96 hours for acute inpatient care; offering 24-hour, 7-day-a-week emergency care; and being located in a rural area, at least 35 miles drive away from any other hospital or CAH (fewer in some circumstances).
When it comes to re-election, Grassley, at 82-years-old, says he’s ready to take on a new term in the U.S. Senate.
For Democrats challenging Grassley, the most noise has been made about Grassley’s decisions on holding U.S. Supreme Court hearings to fill the vacant seat of Antonin Scalia.
The idea of having eight members on the Supreme Court is gaining some favor. In a recent Huffington Politics piece, the idea of having the eight-member court “legal experts have begun arguing that democracy might be better served by eight justices.”
“The Supreme Court today is both political and powerful in ways that would be unrecognizable to the framers of the Constitution,” Pepperdine University law professor Barry McDonald wrote in The New York Times last week.
Grassley answered the Oskaloosa News question that he’s stonewalling the nomination process while playing partisan politics. “I don’t mean to denigrate their accusations, but they’re [Democrats] way off base”, says Grassley.
Grassley said he would expect Democrats to make those accusations because “what they have to do to beat me is to wear down the respect the people of Iowa have for me”.
Grassley says that his bipartisan record speaks for itself, and points towards rankings for 2015 from the Lugar Center, led by former U.S. Sen. Richard Lugar, and the McCourt School of Public Policy at Georgetown University, where the Iowa senator ranks 5th most bipartisan.
“I’ve had a reputation for 35 years of not being partisan”, says Grassley.
“So, let’s look at the partisan part of it”, says Grassley. “I’m chairman of the Judiciary Committee. All 30 bills coming out of committee have been bipartisan bills, and of those 30, 16 have passed the Senate, and nine have been signed by the President”.
Grassley said that he’s had two meetings at the White House with President Obama with regards to a sentencing reform, or criminal justice reform bill that the Judiciary Committee is hoping to get past the Senate. “They can accuse me of being opposite the President on the Supreme Court nomination, but they can’t accuse me of being against him on everything, and surely he’s willing to admit he’s working with me if he invites me to a meeting in the White House”.
When it comes to Donald Trump being the Republican Party nominee and what Trump’s time in the White House would be like, Grassley says, “Without knowing him better, it would be difficult to answer that question”.
Grassley said he can look at some recent examples from Trump to help answer the question. “He’s announced the type of people he would put on the Supreme Court. Very satisfying to me. Right along the lines of what I’d want any Republican President to do.”
Also, “on the Second Amendment, when he’s talked about that”, says Grassley, “Those aren’t the only two issues, but I’m feeling my way along and getting acquainted with him”.
“He’s building confidence with me,” says Grassley, “I’ve already said I’m going to vote for him.”
Grassley adds that if Trump wishes to campaign with him, “I’d campaign with him.”
Grassley has been serving Iowa in the United States Senate since 1981 and is now seeking his seventh term in office. He served in the United States House of Representatives before that for two terms.
