Two Committees in the Senate have been working on separate pieces of health reform legislation. The first, the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee , passed its bill on July 15, 2009. Like the House bill, the HELP Committee's reform legislation would place shared responsibility on individuals, employers, and the government to ensure that most Americans receive health coverage. Key members of the Senate Finance Committee continued bipartisan closed-door meetings to finalize their health reform bill. The full Senate will not vote on health reform legislation prior to its August recess.

Two of the House Committees with jurisdiction over health reform passed legislation out of Committee that would overhaul our nation's health care system. On July 17, the Ways and Means Committee approved the tri-Committee's health reform legislation, the America's Affordable Health Choices Act (H.R. 3200). Later on July 17, the Education and Labor Committee also voted H.R. 3200 out of committee with a vote of 26-22. H.R. 3200 was introduced jointly by the three House Committees on July 14, 2009.

Too many children experience abuse and neglect with negative lifelong consequences. Too few children get the services and supports they need to heal. Yet, proven and promising practices can reduce maltreatment and ameliorate harm. Taking these practices to scale will require federal investment and leadership in five strategic areas. We must: (1) increase prevention and early intervention services that help keep children and families out of crisis; (2) increase specialized treatment services for those children and families that do experience crisis; (3) increase services to support families after a crisis has stabilized (including birth families, as well as kinship and adoptive families created when parents are unable to care for their children); (4) enhance the quality of the workforce providing services to children and families; and (5) improve accountability both for dollars spent and outcomes achieved. Together these efforts will improve the lives of millions of children across the nation

Today, a leading children’s group is praising improvements to made to the House health reform legislation that would guarantee coverage for children’s unique developmental health care needs. Read more from First Focus.

By providing state Medicaid programs with $87 billion in fiscal relief, American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) is likely to be effective in preventing many large Medicaid cutbacks. Targeting 35% of assistance to states with particularly high unemployment rates, ARRA will provide more "bang for the buck" in preventing state cutbacks and stimulating the economy than did fiscal relief legislation in 2004, which gave all states the same level of help.

House Democrats unveiled their health care reform bill this week. The bill seeks to expand health care coverage to the approximately 40 million Americans who are currently uninsured by lowering the cost of health care and making the system more efficient. It includes a new government-run insurance plan to compete with the private companies, a requirement that all Americans have health insurance, and a prohibition on denying coverage because of pre-existing conditions.

A new study finds disparities between poor, at-risk children and more advantaged children as early as 9 months of age - extending prior research that primarily focuses on disparities at kindergarten entry and beyond. It identifies low income and low maternal education as the factors most strongly associated with poorer cognitive, social-emotional, and health outcomes among very young children.

A new report from the Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics tracks 40 key indicators measuring children’s economic circumstances, health, physical environment and safety, family and social environment, behavior, and education. Some troubling statistics include: In 2007, the poverty rate for children rose from 17% to 18% from the previous year and 12.4 million children in America - or 17% of all kids - live in households that are food-insecure.

On July 10, 2009 the House Labor, Health and Human Services, Education ("Labor-H") appropriations subcommittee voted on Chairman Obey's plan. The full committee markup is scheduled for this week.

The Coalition on Human Needs says that if Congress is considering health care reform proposals that scale back benefits or eligibility, it is because Congress is hearing from special interests and not enough from constituents. Ultimately, getting health care reform right depends on raising revenues in a way that spreads the burden fairly. You can tell your Senators and Representatives to do health care right, with CHN's online letter campaign.