Obama ends Kennedy-backed long-term care program as too costly to sustain
LONDON. October 15. KAZINFORM The U.S. won't start a long-term care plan created by the 2010 health overhaul, the largest piece of the law so far to be stopped by Congress, the courts or President Barack Obama's administration.
According to Bloomberg, the Health and Human Services Department said it would indefinitely suspend the program, known as the Class Act, calling it financially unsustainable. In doing so, officials said that deficit savings from the health law would be cut by $86 billion over a decade, from $210 billion.
"I do not see a viable path forward for Class implementation at this time," HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said yesterday in a letter to congressional leaders.
The long-term care program had been championed by Senator Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts before his death. Republicans in Congress called it an accounting gimmick whose premiums would be used to pay for other parts of the law and said Democrats vastly underestimated its future costs. The decision to shut it down validated their criticisms, they said.
The program was "a naked scam, cooking the books trying to cover up the unsustainable cost" of the health law, said Michael Steel , a spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner , an Ohio Republican, in an e-mail.
Democrats and Class supporters said it was a well-intended attempt to solve the mounting cost of long-term care for the disabled, which can be as much as $80,000 a year in a nursing home, according to an administration memo.
The administration and Congress should "continue to explore all of the options to address the critical long-term care needs of Americans," wrote the memo's author, Kathy Greenlee, assistant secretary for aging under Sebelius.
To learn more go to http://www.bloomberg.com/