New Year’s Day, 2014: Obamacare Drastically Cuts Medicare Home Health Services for Sick and Elderly

By Rob Janicki

As if ObamaCare’s botched website, coverage cancellations, and higher costs were not bad enough, the Obama Administration has quietly dealt yet another blow – this time striking millions of the nation’s most vulnerable seniors.  Specifically, the Obama Administration has decided to deeply cut funding for the Medicare program’s home health benefit as a way to help pay for ObamaCare.

In the past couple of years, I've written about how Obamacare will eventually ravage Medicare Advantage Plans and that will come about in time.  But that is not the most pressing concern I have at the moment. 

On January 1, 2014, Obamacare will rob funding from Medicare's home health benefit for the purpose of funding Obamacare.  Obama is essentially telling the very sick and poor Medicare recipients to just do without home health care and die, as the insane liberal congressman,n Alan Grayson accused Republicans of telling seniors.  Now it's come to a reality thanks to Obamacare.

What is certain is that the most vulnerable among Medicare recipients will be those poor and sick seniors that depend upon Medicare's home health benefits to keep them in their own homes.  Without these benefits, this group of seniors will increasingly be forced from their homes into long term care centers that will further draw down their limited financial resources or they will find themselves in dire straits in their own homes without the regular daily care of visiting home health care service providers.  Either way, these vulnerable seniors will be at far greater health risks than any other group.

“An estimated 3.5 million poor and ill homebound senior citizens will wake up on New Year’s Day to discover ObamaCare has slashed funding for their home health care program.”

otaling a whopping 14 percent between 2014 and 2017, this cut is the maximum allowable under the ObamaCare law.  The Administration had the discretion to cut less, or even to make no cuts at all.  But they decided to impose the deepest cut made possible by the Affordable Care Act (shouldn’t we be calling this the “Horrible Care Act”?) legislation.  And in doing so, they will shift billions of dollars from Medicare to ObamaCare.

This cut is not only unprecedented in its magnitude – it will have a direct and devastating impact on the millions of ailing seniors who want to stay in their homes and not have to move to a facility.

But that's just the beginning.  Here's more on the impact that the cuts to the Medicare Home Health Benefits will have on those who provide home health care to seniors.

Hidden on page 117 of the regulation that the Obama Administration quietly released on that Friday evening is a stunning admission: “approximately 40 percent” of all providers of home health services face net losses as a result of this Medicare cut.  Put more plainly, 4-in-10 of all the providers on whom homebound seniors depend face the threat of bankruptcy and closure as a result of ObamaCare.

To my knowledge, this is the first time that any regulation has been issued by any Administration with the knowledge that it would put nearly half of the people it impacted out of business.  Indeed, this ObamaCare cut to Medicare is so severe that thousands of small businesses may be forced to close, and hundreds of thousands of quality jobs could be lost – directly impacting the millions of homebound seniors who depend on them. Read more AMAC

Read more details of this horrendous attack on senior citizens thanks to Obamacare.