The Senate released a draft bill called, “Delivering Immediate Relief to America’s Families, Schools, and Small Businesses Act.” As indicated by their announcement yesterday, this is indeed a “skinny” bill – it includes some of the HEALS provisions but not all and comes in at a price tag of about $500 billion. The liability and Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) provisions are the same as in HEALS. The bill includes the same language from HEALS that would allocate $16 billion for states for testing, contact tracing, and surveillance and $20 billion for vaccine, therapeutic, and diagnostic development. However, this bill overall contains even fewer of our priorities than HEALS which itself fell short of what was needed. Notably missing from this package are the HEALS provisions that allocated an additional $25 billion for provider relief, expanded telehealth through 2021, and does not include the nursing home specific provisions. We will continue to advocate for a package that addresses the needs of aging services providers across the continuum.

Questions?

Contact: 

David Carter | Director, Health Care Finance & Policy

C 360.888.5702