“I am proud to introduce the first in a series of healthcare bills that I will be introducing in the coming weeks,” Jefferson said.  “We have a healthcare crisis in Louisiana and the KHARE Act of 2006 is designed to fix it comprehensively by providing assistance in four areas of healthcare that need it most so that our healthcare system can rebuild better and stronger.”

 “The health care infrastructure in the Gulf Coast region was wiped out by the hurricanes,” Christensen said.  “This bill will provide necessary, needed assistance to the health facilities, academic institutions that are critically important to the region’s health care system, and the health care providers who are in the region to provide care as they wait for their communities to be rebuilt.”

 The bill includes the following provisions:

 Title I: Rebuilding the Health Care Infrastructure.  To meet the immediate and longer-term needs of the health care providers in the hurricane-affected Regions, the bill directs the Department of Health and Human Services to provide forgivable low-interest loans to eligible small business concerns for the restoration of health care and other services connected to health care; It extends tax-credits for medical malpractice insurance to health professionals whose primary place of employment is located in the Hurricane Katrina-affected area and offers grants to eligible non-profit hospitals and clinics to assist hospitals and clinics in defraying qualified medical malpractice insurance expenditures; it also allows healthcare professionals whose healthcare practice is located in the Hurricane Katrina-affected area and is in a high risk specialty, to deduct from gross income an amount equal to 125 percent of the aggregate premiums paid for medical liability insurance.

Title II: Rebuilding Pipelines of Providers in Medically-Needy and Underserved Areas and Communities.   The title establishes a Healthcare Safety Net Infrastructure Trust Fund which will provide the federal guarantee of loan repayment, including guarantees of repayment of refinancing loans, to non-federal lenders making loans to eligible healthcare facilities for healthcare facility replacement (either by construction or acquisition), modernization and renovation projects, and capital equipment acquisition. 

 Title III:  Providing Relief to Academic Institutions.  This provision provides support to Academic institutions, with health and health care related programs, in hurricane-affected areas in order to ensure that they have the capacity to retain health and health care-related staff and personnel, and continue to offer programs that are important to bolstering the health and health care workforce in hurricane-affected areas.

 Title IV:   Restoring Key Components of the Health Care Infrastructure in Medically-Needy and Medically-Underserved Areas.  This title provides grants and technical assistance support to low-income communities with noted health disparities in order to implement programs to improve health and healthcare; disparity grants to organizations and others in hurricane-affected areas to implement programs to healthcare programs; and it expands access to care for low-income hurricane-affected residents by offering disaster relief Medicaid.

 “Our healthcare system was suffering before Katrina,” Jefferson said. “With 22 percent of Louisiana residents living in poverty when Katrina struck and 21 percent of Louisiana residents without health insurance before Katrina, our healthcare system needed a boost.  Since Katrina, 1.2 million residents are now without health insurance.  We must fix this crisis. This bill sets the framework needed to implement sound public health and healthcare practices and it is the start to a new direction for healthcare in the Gulf Coast region.”

 “This bill comes at a critically important time because survivors are returning home,” Christensen said. “This nation left them behind once; let’s not do it again!  Let’s pass the KHARE Act!”