Providing Quality Home Care Services

Floor Speech

Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to discuss the need for strategies to maintain and improve access to home-based medical and long-term care services.

As the Co-Chair of the Seniors Task Force, I am committed to ensuring seniors get the care that need in the setting that they prefer. Today, three and a half million Medicare beneficiaries get home health services, allowing them to live independently in their own homes while getting the medical care they need.

Home healthcare provides skilled, safe and effective medical treatments that once were available only a hospital or doctor's office, allowing seniors and people with disabilities to receive necessary medical care without needing transportation to a doctor's office or admission to a hospital. Home health care is good for individuals and their families, and it also is good for taxpayers. Home healthcare services saved Medicare $2.81 billion dollars between 2006 and 2009.

As we head into this fall's debate on sequestration and alternative budget proposals, I urge my colleagues to remember the importance of home health care to seniors and people with disabilities on Medicare and to avoid cuts that will threaten the services upon which they rely.

Twelve million adults--seniors and adults with disabilities--need long-term care services but Medicaid is currently unable to meet all their needs. The problem will become even more serious in the future, since it is estimated that 27 million Americans will need long-term services by 2050. Yet, our nation still lacks a comprehensive approach to meet current and future long-term care needs.

I have introduced H. Res. 759 to express support for a comprehensive approach to provide the home care workforce and long-term care services we need in order to ensure that seniors and people with disabilities are able to live at home and enjoy a dignified quality of life. It is time not just for a national discussion, but for national solutions.

We know that we have to address the cost of health and long-term care, but there is a right way to deal with those costs and a wrong way. The wrong answer would be to target vulnerable seniors and people with disabilities--denying them home healthcare and long-term care options or shifting the financial burdens to family caregivers. Large Medicare and Medicaid cuts, vouchers and block grants would do real harm to real people. Higher cost-sharing requirements will price essential services out of reach.

Instead, we need to look for ways to lower health care costs across-the-board by eliminating fraud and abuse, giving Medicare authority to use its bargaining power to negotiate for lower drug prices as the VA does, encouraging greater efficiency in the delivery of care, and encouraging the use of cost-effective health care services, including home healthcare services.

As we undertake serious budget discussions this fall, we must carefully consider the real-life impacts of the choices before us. I will be working to make sure that we protect and improve our ability to meet the home healthcare and long-term care needs of seniors and people with disabilities.

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