The fate of many important health reforms aimed directly at seniors is in the hands of the Supreme Court. While the public has focused most of its attention on whether the High Court will strike down the individual mandate in the 2010 health reform law, the justices today are hearing arguments about another critical issue: What should happen to the rest of the Affordable Care [...]
The fiscal plan proposed this week by House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) would profoundly change the way seniors and younger adults with disabilities receive health care and personal assistance. For many programs, it would reduce funding from today’s levels even though the population of those over 65 will double by mid-century. In many ways, it would end the [...]
Long-term care services are not on the front burner of the Presidential campaign. They are not on the back burner. They are, it seems, not even on the stove. Most presidential candidates don't care enough about long-term care services to bother to describe their views on issue. Of the five candidates surveyed by 15 national advocacy groups only two--President Obama and former [...]
In his 2013 budget released today, President Obama has proposed cutting $250 billion out of Medicare and $65 billion out of Medicaid over the next 10 years. Nursing homes,hospitals, and other providers would be paid less, while some Medicare beneficiares would have to pay more out of pocket. At the same time, federal spending for other critical senior services programs would be frozen--in many [...]
Skilled nursing facilities whose patients are too frequently admitted to the hospital would face stiff new penalties according to the deficit reduction plan proposed by President Obama on Sept. 20. These admissions are often caused by falls, infections, or poor medication management. Overall, as part of a broad deficit reduction plan, Obama would cut more than $300 billion from projected [...]
The Community Living Assistance Services and Supports (CLASS) Act, the national long-term care insurance program included in the 2010 health reform law, is on life-support. It is increasingly likely that the Obama Administration will never develop the actual insurance policies that were supposed to be available to consumers next year. On Wednesday, the Senate Appropriations Committee deleted all of the [...]
There may be no more controversial issue for both Baby Boomers and their parents than Social Security. After AARP officials said last week the organization would be open to discussing changes in the system, I wrote the following for my TaxVox blog: Social Security has two obvious problems. While the system is not “broke,” as some insist, it will have only enough [...]