Reform would gut home health care

By Newt Gingrich and Nancy Desmond


In the piney woods of southeast Georgia, 70-year-old Claude Cox is home receiving daily intravenous antibiotics over the next 10 weeks to combat a bacterial infection in his left lung.

The leukemia patient spent only four days instead of many weeks in the hospital thanks to home health care services that send a nurse to his Statenville home to help administer the antibiotics.

In a cost-efficient move, Medicare pays for home health care to keep patients out of hospitals — a program combining efficiency with compassion.

“Considering this versus 10 weeks of hospitalization, there is no comparison,” Cox said. “You get to rest at home and carry on in your own surroundings. It is a far more convenient and healing way of being treated than being in the hospital.”

But if President Barack Obama and Congress have their way, Cox and many of the other 3.2 million other Medicare patients who utilize home health care benefits could be cut off next year.

Congress may not have adopted a health reform bill yet, but the administration and Congress are already taking steps to ration cost-effective and life-saving programs such as home health care.

Bureaucrats at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services issued an administrative order last month, cutting $34 billion from home health care programs for Medicare over the next 10 years.

In addition, the proposed health care reform bill in the House includes $56.8 billion in cuts to home health care services under Medicare.

That’s almost the entire federal budget for home health care services in 2007.

If either of these cuts stands, they would likely put more than two-thirds of the nation’s approximately 9,800 home health care providers out of business in the next two years.

Rather than target the crooks that rip off the taxpayers to the tune of $80 billion to $120 billion annually in the current Medicare and Medicaid programs, the administration and Congress are turning their guns on the defenseless: homebound patients who need help feeding, dressing, taking their medication or even utilizing the bathroom.

A recent study released by Avalere Health LLC found that early use of home health care after hospitalization for those with chronic disease saved Medicare $1.71 billion over two years from 2005-06. Those patients were significantly less likely to be readmitted to a hospital, the study found.

Home health care produces better health care outcomes by keeping patients out of hospitals or nursing homes and helping them heal in a more personalized setting, according to studies by the Rand Corporation.

Another study found patients with congestive heart failure who had home health monitoring had hospitalization rates drop by more than half.

Yet, rather than identifying and stopping the specific scam artists, Washington would rather gut home health care to fund a public health insurance system the majority of Americans don’t want.

In our recent book, “Stop Paying the Crooks” edited by Jim Frogue, we at the Center for Health Transformation have documented specific examples of government health care programs paying crooks, such as men earning maternity; pizza parlors being paid as HIV transfusion centers; and dead patients earning federal health care benefits.

We’re not talking about inadvertent billing errors here. We’re talking about outright fraud going on in the Medicare and Medicaid systems that is not being addressed.

If there was ever a reason not to embark on another government health program, this is it. Government can’t get the details right.

Rather than targeting the scam artists that infiltrate the system, they totally gouge the home health care program — a program that, when managed properly, helps make the existing health care model more efficient.

Every one of the 3.2 million Medicare patients who utilize home health services will be the first victims of health care rationing as a result of the 2009 Obama administration health care reform movement.

This gives all of us a glimpse into the future of life in a Washington-run health care system.

As economist Milton Friedman once said, “There is no such thing as a free lunch.”

Unfortunately, it is the home-bound, the very sick and the disabled who may be the first who will have to pay the price for the politicians so hellbent on financing “free” health care for all.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich of Georgia is the founder of the Center for Health Transformation. Nancy Desmond is the center’s president and CEO.