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Some Say Waterloo; We Say Success: The Raben Group’s Clients and Health Care and Education Reform As the Obama Administration prepares to implement the most comprehensive health care reform measures since the creation of Medicare, many others also have cause to celebrate this singular achievement. We’re excited to share with you some terrific success stories from our valued family of clients. |
About Us The Raben Group combines "Inside the Beltway" experience, insight and access with outside-the-box thinking for clients in the corporate, non-profit and government sectors. Our clients take advantage of a tailored suite of services including policy development, direct lobbying, coalition building, grasstops campaigns, political counsel and strategic communications. |
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Nurse-Family Partnership
We were honored to work with the Nurse-Family Partnership to secure an innovative new home visitation grant program funded at $1.5 billion over five years. This mandatory funding stream will invest in promising and proven home visitation programs that help at-risk mothers navigate pregnancy and early childhood. Congress’ significant investment in home visitation as part of the health reform bill places this program in the ranks of other landmark health-related grant programs like Head Start and the Community Health Center program, ensuring a lasting legacy for home visitation and the Nurse-Family Partnership. Latinos United for Healthcare
The Raben Group’s LatinStrategies team partnered with the Hispanic Federation, the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) and the National Hispanic Leadership Agenda to form Latinos United for Healthcare (LUH). From convening weekly conference calls to coordinating lobby visits and media outreach, our team advocated for the Latino community’s priorities in the final health reform bill. LUH’s successes include ensuring that health care affordability credits were generous enough to cover low-income and immigrant families; securing $6.3 billion in new Medicaid funding for the territories; granting new flexibility for Puerto Rico to determine how to best use funding to expand coverage; and authorizing Puerto Rico to establish a health care exchange with $1 billion in subsidies for individuals and families of modest means. Other victories include programs for the recruitment of more minority health professionals, cultural competency training for health workers and an enhanced role for the Office of Minority Health at HHS to coordinate the federal government’s efforts to reduce minority health disparities. Women of Color United for Health Reform
We also advised Women of Color United for Health Reform – a collaboration of the National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum, the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health and the Black Women’s Health Imperative – as they worked to elevate and amplify the voices of women of color in support of health reform. The coalition hosted a grassroots call with senior White House officials, organized a national call-in day, and launched both paid and earned media campaigns. While work remains to achieve their vision of a just health care system for all, several of the coalition’s priorities – investment in preventative care; improved health data collection and reporting based on race, ethnicity, sex, primary language and geographic location; a commitment to addressing health disparities in underserved communities; and an end to discrimination based on health status and gender – were advanced through the enactment of this legislation. Amgen
The Raben Group’s work with Amgen helped to ensure the passage of an important piece of legislation housed within the larger health reform bill. The Pathway to Biologics Act, originally supported and introduced in the House of Representatives by Rep. Anna Eshoo and in the Senate by the late Senator Edward M. Kennedy, authorizes the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to create a pathway to approve biosimilar drugs. This legislation helps accelerate the biotechnology sector’s drive to provide the afflicted with greater access to safe and effective advanced therapies, treatments and cures for some of medicine’s most challenging diseases. Direct Care Alliance
We teamed up with the Direct Care Alliance (DCA) to secure protections for elderly and disabled citizens as well as direct care workers. Direct care work is expected to become one of the fastest-growing professions as waves of retiring baby boomers will soon require in-home care. Thanks to the dedication of DCA, the health care reform law includes training and development opportunities for direct care workers and a health care workforce commission, measures designed to guarantee high quality in-home care to those who need it most. DCA also worked to include the Community Living Assistance Services and Supports Act in the bill, one of Senator Kennedy’s many legacies. As a result of this legislation, individuals will now have an opportunity to purchase long-term care insurance that provides coverage for in-home care. Compassion & Choices
On behalf of Compassion & Choices, a membership organization that educates on and advocates for appropriate end-of-life care, we secured a provision in the new health care reform law that requires health insurers in the public exchange to offer enrollees information on resources available for advanced care planning. We also successfully prevented the inclusion of a measure that would have undermined end-of-life laws in states like Oregon and Washington. The California Endowment
We helped The California Endowment , the largest health foundation on the West Coast, and its grantees in their efforts to inform the health care reform debate with relevant research, data and expertise by getting this information in front of policymakers through the media, briefings and one-on-one meetings. The final health bill made significant progress in two areas of particular interest to the Endowment: prevention and care for children. If your grandmother told you an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, then she’d be happy to know that the new law requires free preventive care services under Medicare, Medicaid and new private insurance plans; establishes a prevention and public health fund; and finances the establishment of new community health centers and school-based health centers. The new law also includes a number of reforms specifically for children, including extension of the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) through 2019, outlawing discrimination against children with pre-existing conditions, and streamlining the enrollment process for Medicaid, CHIP and the exchange. Committee for Education Funding
The Raben Group helped the Committee for Education Funding (CEF) secure the inclusion of historic investments in college financial aid funding in the final reconciliation bill. These provisions provide $42 billion in critical investments for higher education and, most importantly, $36 billion in Pell Grants to improve college accessibility and affordability. When the education provisions were in serious jeopardy, we helped CEF persuade members of both chambers to include the Pell Grant funding in the reconciliation bill and pass the final measure. |
