Background
SCHIP: AARP supports strengthening the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), because we are committed to working to ensure that all Americans have access to affordable, quality health care. SCHIP provides essential help to many grandparents who are raising grandchildren, offers low-cost coverage of children, and is an important building block in the effort to reform our overall health care system.
Medicaid: AARP believes strengthening Medicaid is a vital priority, because it is an essential foundation of the nation's health care system, serving 55 million, or one in six, of the nation's most vulnerable citizens. It is also the largest payer for long-term care and is critical for redirecting care to the often more cost-effective home and community-based settings that older Americans prefer. In addition, Medicaid provides essential assistance to more than 6 million "dual eligible" low-income Medicare beneficiaries, who tend to have greater health care needs.
Legislative and Regulatory Action
Congress reauthorized SCHIP, and President Obama signed it into law. This provided an early opportunity to advance a critical building block of health care reform legislation in the new Congress. AARP had supported significant bipartisan efforts to strengthen the program in the last Congress also.
More specifically, AARP called on Congress to enact legislation to:
Expand Medicaid coverage for all low-income people, including childless adults, which is especially important for people age 50-64 who are now the fastest-growing segment among the uninsured and generally unable to access Medicaid outside of special "waiver" programs
Revise Medicaid-matching formulas to provide automatic "counter-cyclical" increases in funding to states during economic downturns
Improve Medicaid-based Medicare Savings Programs that help pay Medicare Part B costs for low-income beneficiaries
Require meaningful public openness and accountability when states seek waivers or otherwise change program eligibility and coverage rules
Require that savings to Medicare be taken into account when Medicaid waivers are evaluated for budget neutrality
Revise or repeal Deficit Reduction Act (DRA) provisions that deny care to people who cannot pay cost-sharing obligations, limit eligibility for people who have transferred assets for legitimate purposes and not to game the eligibility system, or who have home equity above $500,000.
On the regulatory front, the new Administration must revise or rescind six harmful Medicaid regulations that Congress put under a moratorium until April 1, 2009. Two regulations are of greatest concern to AARP. The first is a regulation on case management that would impede efforts to get older Americans out of institutions and into home and community-based services. The second would bar coverage of important rehabilitative services that are necessary to prevent worsening of individuals' conditions.
All six regulations address areas where there has been abuse, but as drafted undermine the goals of the Medicaid program and instead shift costs for legitimate services to states and individuals.
Other regulatory priorities include revisions to Deficit Reduction Act (DRA) rules for:
Citizenship documentation requirements that prevent legal citizens from obtaining coverage
State benefit packages that don't ensure that all medically necessary services are covered
Asset transfers so people who were not trying to cheat the system are not penalized for helping families and charities
Home equity, so people can get the long-term care that they need.
The Cost of Doing Nothing
Failure to make the necessary legislative changes to Medicaid and rescind harmful regulations would drive up the total cost of health care in the long-term, because untreated preventable conditions and complications will require more intensive late-stage treatments.
