The Long-Awaited Senate Finance Plan

After much waiting and speculation, the Senate Finance Committee today issued its America’s Healthy Future Act.  

We at AAHSA were pleased that it preserves the Medicare “cost of living” increase for nursing facilities and, at long last, requires staffing expenditures to be broken out separately on nursing homes’ Medicare cost reports, so there can be a proper accounting under Medicare for the resources nursing homes commit to nurse staffing, which is the best evidence of quality.

The bill makes no mention of the CLASS Plan, which includes creation of a national insurance program for long-term services and supports, but we were not expecting that.  The Finance Committee does not have jurisdiction over the issues that CLASS covers. 

Our next (very large) job is to work to make sure that CLASS is included in the “zipping” of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee bill with the Senate Finance bill.  We didn’t intentionally time it this way, but it was fortuitous that our Roll Call ad urging enaction of the CLASS Plan ran on the back page of today’s issue, opposite the story about the debut of Senator Baucus’s bill. 

Stay tuned for more call-in, email and meeting campaigns as the debate heats up.