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ADVOCACY SPOTLIGHT


Commerce and Congress John McManus explains how Washington, DC, matters to your bottom line BY KRISTIN MURPHY


John McManus is president and founder of The McManus Group LLC, a consulting firm specializing in strategic policy and political counsel and advocacy for health care clients with issues before Congress and the administration. Prior to founding the McManus Group, McManus served as the staff director for the House Ways and Means Subcommittee and led the policy development, negotiations and drafting of the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement and Modernization Act of 2003. He has worked with the ASC community for more than 10 years to protect and promote ASC interests in Washington, DC.


Why does ASCA spend time and resources lobbying when it seems like nothing is happening in Congress? MCMANUS:We are in a volatile and polarized time in Washington. There are even divisions within the parties (e.g., the Freedom Caucus versus Main Street Republicans and Blue Dogs ver- sus Progressive Democrats). It is a challenge to pass legislation


in this environment, but some bills are getting through, and we must be ever vigilant to protect ASCs from provi- sions that could do us harm. We also need to try to advance priorities where we see opportunities. For example, last year, Congress enacted the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015 (MACRA), which finally repealed the dysfunctional Sustainable Growth Rate (SGR) physician pay- ment formula that had threatened our physician partners with massive cuts for years. Congress extracted more than $30 billion from hospitals, skilled nursing facilities and other post-acute providers to help fund that package. Yet, ASCs were not cut because we were aggressively presenting our fun- damental argument that it is critical to maintain a vigorous, competitive alter- native to hospitals.


This industry’s strength is our fundamental message that ASCs provide high-quality care in a convenient setting for the patient while saving Medicare billions of dollars every year. Congress should care about that.”


—John McManus, The McManus Group LLC


Our educational efforts in Washing- ton combined with a grassroots cam- paign by ASCs in member districts helped policymakers understand the value we bring to the table in provid- ing efficient and high-quality care— saving Medicare billions of dollars every year. It also helped them appre- ciate that ASCs are already combatting a very unfair reimbursement scheme that does not provide payment updates similar to those that hospitals receive, which has the effect of widening our reimbursement gap over time.


It seems like ASCA talks about the same bills every year, but they never pass. Why? MCMANUS: More than 9,000 bills were introduced in this Congress alone, yet only several hundred will become law. When Congress moves health care legislation, it tends to com-


bine a lot of different bills and include other proposals that may not have been introduced at all into one omni- bus package. Our goal is to make sure provisions in our ASC bills—like the Electronic Health Fairness Act and the Ambulatory Surgery Center Qual- ity and Access Act—are in play when these larger bills come together. We have made good progress


on many of these provisions. The Electronic Health Fairness Act—which repeals meaningful use penalties on physicians who provide care at ASCs because the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has provided no pathway for ASCs to be deemed certified electronic health providers— has passed both the House and Senate in different legislative packages. As of press time, we feel confident it will get across the finish line this year. For the current status of this legislation,


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