Yesterday was a great day!

We passed another very significant milestone today in our quest to transform how long-term services and supports are financed.  The Congressional Budget Office  (CBO) released its preliminary score the Senate HELP Committee’s Affordable Health Choices Act, which is highly congruent with our vision and plan that you have worked so hard to advance.

 In a nutshell, CBO determined that a national insurance trust is sustainable and won’t drain government resources.  The scoring determined that a national insurance trust would generate $59 billion in “savings” to the government, as Sen. Dodd said today in media reports. This conclusion helps bolster the case for including long-term services and supports in health care reform and removes the cost barrier that some members of Congress were raising to avoid the issue entirely.

 Of course, our work is not complete and it will still require significant advocacy to make this plan a reality. As you might expect, political motivations are at play and supporters and opponents are speaking out very quickly. Our issue will become front burner fodder. We will have to educate many people about how The HELP Committee provisions move health care forward. We will continue to call on you in the coming weeks to call, write, and visit until your representatives and senators can do nothing but accept that we have a solution that makes it affordable to care.

 I am awed by the work of Barbara Manard and Marsha Greenfield in providing expertise and cultivating relationships to help bring us to this point.  They are dogged in their efforts and I am proud that they represent our association in these important negotiations. You have been dogged in your support as ambassadors and leaders, organizing call-in parties and speaking out in letters to the editor.  Your efforts are proving worthwhile and will continue to do so as this debate continues.

 We’re gonna make it affordable to care— for the cost of a cup of coffee!….

 Stay tuned and stay involved… Larry