Home Health & Hospice Week

You could get an unwelcome Christmas present under newly enacted compromise. Home care providers have avoided Medicare payment rate cuts now, but they may see them very soon. Cutting home care payment rates and imposing copayments were ideas floated in the debt ceiling talks that have consumed Washington, D.C. in recent weeks. But now President Obama has signed a debt deal bill that avoids any Medicare provider cuts -- for the moment. Under the agreement enacted Aug. 2, the debt ceiling was raised in exchange for promised cuts to the U.S. budget -- including entitlement programs like Medicare -- later this year. If a 12- person bipartisan congressional committee can't come up with $1.2 trillion in cuts that Congress approves, a 2 percent across-the-board reduction would take effect. The 2 percent cut, on top of the 3 percent reduction already slated for 2012, would be painful. But larger cuts or copayments implemented by [...]