Rep. Brian K. Fitzpatrick

Compacts, Access, and Responsible Expansion for Mental Health Professionals Act or the C.A.R.E. for Mental Health Professionals Act This bill establishes a grant program to promote interstate licensure compacts for mental health professionals. These are licensure agreements enacted by two or more states to mutually recognize the licenses of counselors, psychiatrists, psychologists, or pediatric mental health professionals. The Health Resources and Services Administration must award grants to interstate compact commissions or professional licensing boards. Recipients may use grants for projects to (1) incentivize mental health professionals to practice in states with interstate licensure compacts, and (2) develop or maintain interstate compact commissions.

Healthcare Extension and Accessibility for Developmentally disabled and Underserved Population Act of 2021 or the HEADs UP Act of 2021 This bill authorizes the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to award grants to support health centers that provide services for individuals with developmental disabilities, including dental care. Grant recipients must provide specialized treatment to individuals with developmental disabilities as necessary. The bill also provides statutory authority for HHS to designate individuals with developmental disabilities as health-professional shortage population groups for the purposes of the National Health Service Corps (NHSC). The NHSC provides scholarships and student loan repayment awards to eligible providers who agree to work with designated populations or in areas that face shortages of primary care, dental care, and mental health care providers.

Maddy summaryHRES 815 is a symbolic resolution introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives on November 18, 2021. It expresses congressional support for National Rural Health Day, which recognizes the importance of rural health care and celebrates providers serving rural communities. The resolution highlights challenges like hospital closures and access barriers faced by rural health facilities but does not create new laws or funding. It simply affirms commitment to improving rural health care accessibility through policy, without specifying concrete changes. As a procedural resolution, it has no binding effect on legislation or funding.

This resolution encourages people around the world to work to achieve the goal of zero new HIV transmissions, zero discrimination, and zero AIDS-related deaths, in order to end the HIV epidemic in the United States and around the world by 2030. The resolution supports continued funding for prevention, care and treatment services, and research programs for communities impacted by HIV and people living with HIV in the United States and globally. The resolution supports continued leadership by the United States in domestic, bilateral, multilateral, and private sector efforts to fight HIV. Finally, the resolution urges other members of the international community to sustain and scale up their support for and financial contributions to efforts around the world to combat HIV.

Keep Food Containers Safe from PFAS Act of 2021 This bill prohibits food packaging that contains intentionally added PFAS (i.e., a perfluoroalkyl substance or a polyfluoroalkyl substance that is man-made with at least one fully fluorinated carbon atom).

Promoting Advancement Through Transit Help to College Act or the PATH to College Act This bill authorizes grants for improving transit connections for students at institutions of higher education, such as by adding transit stops within walking distance of a campus or subsidizing transit costs for students. The Department of Transportation may award the grants to partnerships of public transit providers and one or more community colleges, historically Black colleges and universities, tribal colleges and universities, and other minority-serving institutions.

Maddy summaryHR 6020, the Supporting Medicare Providers Act of 2021, extends temporary Medicare payment increases for physicians through 2022 instead of ending them on January 1, 2022. It updates specific dates in Medicare law (Section 1848(t) of the Social Security Act) to maintain current payment rates for doctors treating Medicare patients. This directly affects physicians and clinics participating in Medicare who rely on these temporary payment adjustments. The bill makes no new policy changes but ensures existing payment levels continue for providers during 2022.

This bill requires the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) to establish the Advisory Committee on United States Outlying Areas and Freely Associated States to provide advice and guidance to the VA on matters relating to veterans residing in American Samoa, Guam, Puerto Rico, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, the U.S. Virgin Islands, the Federated States of Micronesia, the Republic of the Marshall Islands, and the Republic of Palau. Among other duties, the committee must advise the VA on how to improve its programs and services to better serve veterans living in the listed areas.

Maddy summaryHRES 816 is a non-binding resolution supporting the designation of the week beginning November 15, 2021, as "National Apprenticeship Week." It does not create new laws or funding but aims to raise public awareness about registered apprenticeships, which provide paid on-the-job training and career pathways. The resolution highlights how these programs help workers gain industry-recognized credentials in high-demand fields like healthcare, advanced manufacturing, and green energy. It emphasizes apprenticeships' role in building a skilled workforce and increasing economic mobility without imposing legal obligations.

This resolution urges all U.S. government officials to decline invitations to the XXIV Olympic Winter Games and XIII Paralympic Winter Games as part of an official diplomatic delegation unless the International Olympic Committee and International Paralympic Committee move the XXIV Olympic Winter Games and XIII Paralympic Winter Games to a city under the jurisdiction of a government that is not committing mass atrocities, or the Department of State has certified that the Chinese Communist Party has stopped committing acts of genocide and that the perpetrators have accounted for their crimes. The resolution also encourages the International Olympic Committee and International Paralympic Committee to develop a framework for reprimanding or disqualifying host cities and the countries in which they are located if their governments are actively committing mass atrocities.