Medicare beneficiaries need your help to ensure continued access to home health care services. House leaders put forth a proposal for legislation that would cut home health services by $56.8 billion dollars over the next ten years to help finance an expanding access to health insurance for the elderly. Senate legislation would then cut 43.2 billion dollars and the home health benefit would suffer a disproportionate share of the Medicare cuts in the legislation.

Medicare spends less today on home health care and serves fewer home health beneficiaries that in 1997. The last time cuts of this "magnitude" were implemented in 1997; the unintended consequence was the number of Medicare beneficiaries receiving home health services dropped by 1.5 billion.

I support the goal of health care for all. However, that goal should not come at the expenses of frail elderly and disabled homebound Medicare beneficiaries receiving care in their homes and communities where they want to be. If the proposed cuts are implemented, under the House bill nearly seventy percent of home health agencies will be paid less by Medicare than the costs of delivering care by 2011--under the Senate bill by 2016. Large sections of the country will be at risk of losing home health patients will be forced into costly institutional care and Medicare will actually pay more.

The President has requested $34 billion dollars in home health savings. I understand the home health community has offered a plan that would raise at least this much while targeting abuses and preserving access to care.