Effects of economizing Medicare changes that include a home health copayment may not be big enough to outweigh vigorous opposition, a first House hearing on possible ways to overhaul Medicare suggests.
As reported by the newsletter CQ Roll Call, the hearing by the Republican-led Ways and Means Health Subcommittee focused on three Medicare cost-saving proposals included in President Obama’s fiscal 2014 budget proposal: creating a copayment for home health services, increasing the annual deductible for Part B services and increasing the premiums that wealthier beneficiaries pay for Parts B and D. But the panel’s Democrats objected to the costs that would impose on beneficiaries.
Even though the proposals were included in Obama’s budget plan, they are not “holy writ,” subcommittee ranking Democrat Jim McDermott (Wash.) said. The Obama package “had shared sacrifice, and included spending cuts and revenue increases. When cherry-picked, they are nothing more than partisan cuts,” he contended.
The three proposals considered at the hearing have been offered in proposals by several bipartisan deficit reduction groups on Capitol Hill as well as by the president. Even so, Hill Democrats argued that the ideas would not address the fundamental drivers of growing health care costs but merely would ask beneficiaries to pay more.
Witnesses at the hearing focused on the home health copayment in particular. “Home health care is liable to abuse, and I think that some cost-sharing is appropriate,” said Alice Rivlin, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. But Medicare Rights Center President Joe Baker said the copayment, which Obama proposed to save $730 million over 10 years, “would be most damaging to the most vulnerable: the poorest, oldest, and the sickest.”