The House voted 225-204 yesterday to pass the Children’s Health and Medicare Protection Act (H.R. 3162), which would reauthorize the State Children’s Health Insurance Program and includes several AHA-supported Medicare provisions. The bill would provide $50 billion over five years to reauthorize and expand the SCHIP program, largely paid for by a 45-cent-per-pack increase in the federal tobacco tax and Medicare Advantage payment cuts. In addition, the bill would limit physician self-referral to hospitals in which they have ownership, provide regulatory relief for rehabilitation and long-term care hospitals, protect rural health services and stop a scheduled reduction in physician Medicare payments. However, the bill would reduce the inflation updates for inpatient and outpatient services by 0.25 percentage points, which AHA said would be devastating to the nation’s hospitals, particularly in light of the nearly $20 billion in prospective cuts the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services finalized yesterday in the fiscal year 2008 inpatient prospective payment system final rule. The Senate is expected to pass its own SCHIP bill by the end of this week. The president has threatened to veto both the House and Senate versions of the bill.