Recognition of the Minority Leader

Floor Speech

RECOGNITION OF THE MINORITY LEADER -- (Senate - December 05, 2009)

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Ms. COLLINS. Madam President, I thank the manager of the bill.

I rise in support of the motion offered by my colleague from Nebraska to commit this bill in order to strike the more than $42 billion in cuts in the Medicare home health benefit.

Madam President, you, too, come from a pretty rural State, so I know you understand just how important home health care is to the seniors in our States. Home health care has become an increasingly important part of our health care system. The highly skilled services and compassionate care that our Nation's home health agencies provide have helped to keep families together. They have enabled millions of our most frail and vulnerable senior citizens to avoid hospitals and nursing homes and, instead, to receive care just where they want to be, in the privacy, comfort, and security of their own homes.

Moreover, by helping these individuals to avoid more costly institutional care, home health saves Medicare millions of dollars each year.

That is why I find it so frustrating and so ironic that once again the Medicare home health benefit is under attack.

The bill before us would cut payments to home health providers by more than $42 billion over the next 10 years. Moreover, these cuts are a double whammy because they come in addition to $7.5 billion worth of cuts that have been imposed by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services through regulation.

These cuts are particularly unfair and disproportionate for a program that costs Medicare less than $16 billion a year. That is simply not right, and it is certainly not in the interests of our Nation's seniors who rely on home health care in order to keep out of more expensive hospitals, nursing homes, and other institutions.

The Medicare home health benefit has already taken a larger hit in spending over the past 10 years than any other Medicare benefit. In fact, home health as a share of Medicare spending has dropped from 8.7 percent in 1997 to only 3.6 percent today.

There was an excellent article in today's New York Times talking about the disproportionate impact this bill would have on home health care. As the reporter points out, under this legislation, home care would absorb a disproportionate share of the cuts. It currently accounts for 3.7 percent of the Medicare budget but would be required to absorb 10.2 percent of the savings from Medicare under the House bill and 9.4 percent of savings under the Senate bill. That does not make sense.

Home health care has consistently proven to be a compassionate and cost-effective alternative to institutional care. In rural States where home health providers have to travel long distances to deliver care, the impact of these cuts will ultimately fall on our seniors because home health agencies simply will not be able to afford to serve seniors who are living in smaller communities off rural roads in isolated parts of our States.

These deep cuts are completely counterproductive to our efforts to control overall health care costs. They also place the quality of home health services at risk, particularly given ever-rising staffing, transportation, and technology cuts.

As our Nation faces the continuing challenges of caring for an aging population, now is not the time to be making such deep cuts in the Medicare home health benefit. I urge support for the motion to commit introduced by my friend and colleague from Nebraska.

Thank you, Madam President.

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Ms. COLLINS. Madam President, home health care is the compassionate, cost-effective alternative to institutional care. It allows our seniors to receive care just where they want to be--in their own homes. Under this bill, home health care would take a disproportionate cut.

Let me quote a home health care director in my State who sums up what the approach will be, what will happen if this motion is agreed to. She says:

Our staff is scared, but it is our patients who will pay the price if Congress makes cuts in home care.

I urge support for the motion to commit offered by the Senator from Nebraska.

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