Preserve Home Health, Homecare Benefits; Contact Congress, USA

Main Category: Caregivers / Homecare
Article Date: 06 Nov 2005 - 4:00 PDT

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This is a key week to contact your Members of Congress to urge them to act to preserve the integrity of the home health benefit during the Budget Reconciliation debate now underway in Congress.

The GOP leadership of the House of Representatives does not want to include any Medicare provisions in the House version of Budget Reconciliation legislation, and the Senate Finance Committee recently rejected a proposal to freeze the home health market update. However, the home health benefit will continue to be at risk throughout the Reconciliation process during the next few weeks. House leaders are under intense pressure to fix the problem of physician reimbursement, set for a 4.4 percent cut on January 1. The Senate Reconciliation bill includes a one-year physician fix, but also eliminates the Medicare Advantage Stabilization Fund. This latter provision saves approximately $10 billion but is opposed by the Bush Administration, which issued a statement saying, "If a final bill is presented to the President that… cuts the Stabilization Fund to increase Medicare spending, the President's senior advisors will recommend that he veto the bill."

If the House feels pressured to include a physician fix, and the MA Stabilization Fund is off limits as a pay for, everything else could be on the table as possible offsets - including the home health market basket, a beneficiary copayment, and DME items.

The Value Message: Urge your Representatives to continue to recognize the value of homecare and protect the integrity of the benefit by opposing any cuts to the benefit, for example, a market basket freeze, a beneficiary copayment, or elimination of the capped rental choice for beneficiaries. Share the studies that AAHomecare has compiled demonstrating the cost effectiveness and clinical efficaciousness of homecare (at http://www.aahomecare.org).

How to reach your Members of Congress: All Congressional offices can be reached through the U.S. Capitol switchboard at 202-224-3121. Also, you can E-mail your Congressional offices through the http://www.aahomecare.org website. Go to the "Write to Congress" section at the bottom and simply enter your ZIP code.

American Association for Homecare
625 Slaters Lane, Suite 200
Alexandria
VA 2314
USA
For more information, please call AAHomecare at (703) 836-6263.
http://www.aahomecare.org.

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