Today, Kamala Harris announced her plan to expand Medicare to cover long-term care at home. This would be life-changing for older adults, people with disabilities, and those who love them.
This plan is paid for by expanding Medicare’s power to negotiate lower drug prices so that Big Pharma stops ripping us off. Older adults get lower drug prices and a new home health benefit.
Currently, older adults and people with disabilities who need care that family can’t provide are too often warehoused in dehumanizing nursing homes. Often, these nursing homes are owned by private equity corporations who are exploiting patients for profit. Under the Harris plan, older adults and disabled people would have the freedom to stay in their own homes.
This is a universal benefit, in the grand tradition of Franklin D. Roosevelt and Frances Perkins. Everyone on Medicare would qualify.
This is a win for everyone in America — except the billionaires.
[Editor’s note: For the Harris plan to work effectively for people with Medicare, the benefit would be coupled with an out-of-pocket cap in Traditional Medicare, so that people who did not want a big Medicare Advantage insurance corporation coming between them and their treating physician could get the home care they need when they need it in Traditional Medicare. Alternatively, the benefit would be available only directly through the government. Medicare Advantage insurers would not be deciding whether people qualified for the home care benefit and profiting from denying people home care services.
Today, only wealthy Americans can afford Traditional Medicare because it lacks an out-of-pocket cap and requires people to buy supplemental coverage to protect themselves against financial risk. Lower income Americans are forced to choose among Medicare Advantage plans without the information they need to avoid the bad actors. Under the current defective Medicare Advantage payment system, health insurers profit from denying care. Consequently, many insurers are engaged in widespread inappropriate delays and denials of care, according to the HHS Office of the Inspector General and many other health policy experts.
Medicare does cover a limited amount of home health care today, but it is very hard to get more than a dozen hours of care each week and the benefit is only available to people who are homebound and need daily skilled nursing services or therapy services on an intermittent basis. People in Medicare Advantage plans get less home health care than people in Traditional Medicare]
Here’s more from Just Care:
- Medicare Advantage poses grave risk to rehab facilities and nursing homes
- Data show Medicare Advantage covers less nursing, rehab, home health care
- Private equity-owned hospice and home health agencies drive up Medicare spending, jeopardize quality of care
- John Oliver: The Medicare hospice scam
- Need home health care? Don’t count on Medicare
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