One would have thought that after more than 750,000 Covid-19 related deaths among older adults in the US and more than 200,000 deaths among residents and staffs of long-term care facilities that Congress would act to improve the nation’s long-term care system. One would have been wrong. Except for including about $12 billion in federal funds to temporarily expand Medicaid’s [...]
After much back-and-forth, House Democrats decided to include a scaled-back version of a family and medical leave plan in their nearly $2 trillion version of the Build Back Better social spending bill. The measure would give families up to four weeks of leave a year to care for relatives who are ill, including those who need long-term personal assistance. The [...]
Last week, President Biden agreed to drop his proposed $400 billion increase in the federal share of Medicaid’s home-based long-term care services. He made the concession to reach a deal with a bipartisan group of 21 senators on a much broader physical infrastructure bill. But the flaws in the current system of supports and services for older adults and young [...]
President Biden’s proposed massive expansion of Medicaid home-based long-term care is running into trouble in the Senate. And it may be done in, not by hard-core conservatives, but by a small group of self-styled Senate moderates. In his American Jobs Plan, Biden proposed increasing the federal share of Medicaid’s home and community-based services (HCBS) program by $400 billion—the largest increase [...]