Posted 12/19/2013 | Obamacare Watchdog
by
Andrew Mangione – As if ObamaCare’s botched website, coverage
cancellations, and higher costs were not bad enough, the Obama
Administration has quietly dealt yet another blow – this time striking
millions of the nation’s most vulnerable seniors. Specifically, the
Obama Administration has decided to deeply cut funding for the Medicare
program’s home health benefit as a way to help pay for ObamaCare.
The
Administration made this announcement very quietly, waiting to do so
until the very end of the last Friday before Thanksgiving, perhaps
thinking that most people would not be looking.
To
be sure, the timing of the Administration’s quiet announcement did keep
it out of sight – for a while. That ended on December 12th, however, when the Washington Examiner broke the story in an article headlined “ObamaCare forcing 14 percent cut in Medicare’s home health program.” FOX News and the Daily Callerhave
also picked up this story, so full attention is now being paid to this
unprecedented cut – and the harm it will do to frail seniors across
America.
As the Examiner’s
Richard Pollock wrote, “An estimated 3.5 million poor and ill homebound
senior citizens will wake up on New Year’s Day to discover ObamaCare
has slashed funding for their home health care program.” He’s right: on
January 1st, the Obama Administration will sharply cut Medicare funding for home healthcare services.
Totaling
a whopping 14 percent between 2014 and 2017, this cut is the maximum
allowable under the ObamaCare law. The Administration had the
discretion to cut less, or even to make no cuts at all. But they
decided to impose the deepest cut made possible by the Affordable Care
Act (shouldn’t we be calling this the “Horrible Care Act”?)
legislation. And in doing so, they will shift billions of dollars from
Medicare to ObamaCare.
This
cut is not only unprecedented in its magnitude – it will have a direct
and devastating impact on the millions of ailing seniors who want to
stay in their homes and not have to move to a facility.
This
year, Medicare home health services were delivered to approximately 3.5
million Medicare beneficiaries. According to the federal government’s
own data, these seniors are older, poorer and sicker than the Medicare
beneficiary population as whole. Many of these seniors also reside in
rural communities, where home health care is especially important
because other sources of treatment are often located many miles away.
The
Medicare home health benefit is also of critical importance to younger
Americans. Families across America depend on home health services to
help them care for their aging parents. Having a skilled nurse come to
their homes to deliver needed treatment not only means that Mom and Dad
don’t have to go into a nursing home – it also means their adult
daughters and sons can balance caring for their parents with raising a
family and earning a living.
In
light of its importance to millions of seniors and their families, the
Medicare home health sector has been one of the nation’s leading
creators of new jobs. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics,
thousands of Americans find employment every month in the home health
field. Just as important, these jobs are being created by small
businesses, which constitute more than 90 percent of all providers of
home health services.
But all that’s about to change.
Hidden
on page 117 of the regulation that the Obama Administration quietly
released on that Friday evening is a stunning admission: “approximately
40 percent” of all providers of home health services face net losses as a
result of this Medicare cut. Put more plainly, 4-in-10 of all the
providers on whom homebound seniors depend face the threat of bankruptcy
and closure as a result of ObamaCare.
To my knowledge, this is the first time that any regulation has been issued by any Administration
with the knowledge that it would put nearly half of the people it
impacted out of business. Indeed, this ObamaCare cut to Medicare is so
severe that thousands of small businesses may be forced to close, and
hundreds of thousands of quality jobs could be lost – directly impacting
the millions of homebound seniors who depend on them.
The
impact that ObamaCare’s Medicare cut will have on seniors, families and
small businesses is widely projected to be severe. What is not yet
known, however, is the impact this cut will have on U.S. politics. In
2010, the revelation that ObamaCare would slash Medicare funding so
angered senior voters, that they helped give Republicans control of the
U.S. House of Representatives. Now that these cuts are being imposed,
the Democrats who voted for the Affordable Care Act face the possibility
of losing their Senate majority when senior voters return to the polls
in November.
Indeed,
with Medicare so negatively impacted by ObamaCare, an important
question will soon be put to the millions of seniors, families, and
providers who care deeply about home health: what answer will they have
to ObamaCare’s New Year’s Day surprise?
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