Policy Corner: January 24, 2020

CBITF Co-chair Responds to the President’s Comments about TBI

In response to President Trump’s comments pertaining to individuals who sustained traumatic brain injuries (TBIs) as a result of Iranian missile strikes, Congressional Brain Injury Task Force Co-chair Rep. Bill Pascrell, Jr. (D-N.J.) sent a letter to Mathew P. Donovan, Undersecretary of Defense Personnel and Readiness, and Thomas McCaffery, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs, expressing concern that President Trump downplayed brain injury symptoms to “headaches.” He requested answers to the following questions: 1) why were troops not required to report to bunkers for injury prevention and overall personnel safety; 2) how many of the initial 11 service members transported to Kuwait and Germany for treatment sustained a brain injury; 3) how many were included in the second transport to Germany for treatment and evaluation, and any subsequent treatment for blast injury or concussion; and 4) do the Departments of Defense (DoD) and Veterans Affairs (VA) remain committed to understanding the long-term impacts of concussion. He noted that the DOD and VA announced $50 million in new funding to research long-term impacts of concussion in October 2019.

During a news conference held in Switzerland Wednesday, President Trump relegated injuries sustained by service members during the attack as nothing more than headaches. Since then, Susan H. Connors, President and CEO of the Brain Injury Association of America (BIAA), and several veterans’ organizations issued statements calling out his comments and explained the significance of TBI.

Senators Introduce Accessible Voting Act

Sens. Bob Casey, Jr. (D-Pa.), Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), and Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y) introduced the Accessible Voting Act, S. 3206, to amend the Help America Vote Act of 2002 to increase voting accessibility for individuals with disabilities and older individuals. S. 3206 would establish the Office of Accessibility, ensure access to accurate information and voter resources, expand the number of options to cast a ballot, establish a national resource center on accessible voting, and increase grants to states to improve accessibility.

House Committee to Hold Hearing on Family Leave Act

The House Ways and Means Committee will hold a hearing Jan. 28 on the Family and Medical Insurance Leave Act (H.R. 1185/S. 463), which would create a national family and medical leave insurance program to help ensure that people who work can take the time they need to address serious health and caregiving needs of their family members who suffer an injury or incur a serious condition. The bill is sponsored by Rep. Rosa L. DeLauro (D-Conn.) with over 200 co-sponsors.

Patient Groups Urge Supreme Court to Swiftly Take Up Health Care Case

Earlier this month, 24 organizations representing millions of patients strongly endorsed the petition filed by 20 state attorneys general, the District of Columbia, and the U.S. House of Representatives to seek expedited U.S. Supreme Court review of December’s Texas v. United States ruling pertaining to the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Texas and 19 other states, as well as two individual plaintiffs, filed a complaint in April 2018 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, arguing that the ACA’s individual mandate provision is unconstitutional and that the rest of the law is inseverable from that provision, so it must also fall. In an unprecedented move, the U.S. Department of Justice joined the plaintiffs.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit struck down the ACA’s individual mandate and remanded the case back to the district court to rule on whether other components of the law, including the future of many key patient protections remain valid. The January petition requests that the U.S. Supreme Court immediately review the appeals court’s decision that the ACA’s individual mandate is unconstitutional as well as whether, if it is unconstitutional, the rest of the ACA remains unaffected.