NAHC to Medicare: Increase Long-Term In-Home Care Coverage
Medicare celebrated its 47th birthday Monday and while it seems to be getting enough attention in the political arena, the National Association for Home Care & Hospice took the program’s birthday as an opportunity to offer some suggestions to help keep the Medicare program intact and void of achey issues that come with aging.
Val J. Halamandaris, president of the NAHC provided a bulleted list of ways to improve and preserve the Medicare program.
Increased coverage for long-term in-home care, especially for Americans with numerous chronic conditions who account for 50% of the country’s health care costs is one of the seven suggestions the NACH provides. A wider range of options when it comes to palliative and hospice care is also cited as a way to enhance the Medicare program.
The NAHC also suggests that to continue aging well, the preservation of Medicare as an “earned right” is crucial. While the program is mainly used by retired Americans, the NAHC reiterates the fact that younger generations pay into and help fund the program in an expectation that they will be taken care of through the program once they hit retirement age. Medicare should not become a “handout” program available only to certain people, according to NAHC.
Benefits available through Medicare should be consistent throughout every one of the country’s states, and should continue as a federally administered program in order to help control costs and minimize abuse, NAHC says.
Coverage of disabled young Americans, and the preservation of the program’s goal to provide preventative and curative care are also on the list of ways to keep Medicare from going “over the hill.”
The NAHC also took the day’s opportunity to stress the idea that the beginning of Medicare represented a compromise between both political parties to create a program that served the greater good for the American people.
Written by Erin Hegarty
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