When was the America's Healthy Future Act first proposed?
America's Healthy Future Act
The America's Healthy Future Act () was a law proposed by Democratic Senator Max Baucus of Montana, who chairs the Senate Finance Committee, on September 16, 2009.[1][2][3] It is also colloquially known as the Baucus Health Bill,[4] the Baucus Health Plan,[5] or BaucusCare.[6] Baucus initially publicly released a 223-page summary of the proposal.[2] It started going through the Senate mark-up process on September 22.[7] That amendment process finished Oct. 2, and was passed by the Finance Committee on October 13 by a 14 to 9 vote,.[8][9] An October CBO report stated that enacting the proposal would, on net, end up reducing the federal deficit by $81 billion over the 2010–2019 period.[10]
Seed Global Health
The Global Health Service Partnership was developed from efforts dating back more than half a century. Building on a vision outlined in a 2 am speech, U.S. President John F. Kennedy created the Peace Corps by Executive Order in 1961. In 1979, Senator Javits proposed the International Health Act of 1979, which aimed to build an International Health Service program. The act never passed. Finally, in 2003, the US government established the President’s Emergency Program for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), the first major health program of its scale. This established a need for increased human resources to help execute the program. In 2005, the Institute of Medicine released its influential report, Healer’s Abroad: Americans Responding to the Human Resource Crisis in HIV/AIDS, which detailed a Global Health Service Corps that would send full-time, paid professionals abroad not only to address in-country health care needs, but also to offer clinical, technical, and managerial guidance to foreign health care workers. That same year, Senator William Frist (R, Tennessee) introduced a bill in 2005 which legislated for a Global Health Corps “…to improve the health, welfare, and development of communities in select foreign countries and regions…” To achieve this goal, the Global Health Corps would send volunteers abroad to address a range of needs, including but not limited to, health care treatment and education, hygiene and food preparation training, disease surveillance, and technical health support.