North Dakota Insurance

Republicans score an important victory this morning that the Senate Finance Committee to approve his plan to make huge changes in Medicare and Medicaid. But President Clinton immediately attacked the bill and said it contained “scandalous provisions” that would ruin the quality of care for the elderly, especially for people in nursing homes.

Only a few hours after the Committee approved the bill earlier today, Mr. Bill Clinton, had already threatened to veto the package that takes little language and images assail clear.

Think about it, “Clinton said in his weekly address on radio this morning.” Who wants a police force with large Medicaid to take power, your fortune and insert in your house and make sure nothing is left for your children? I do not think there should be a condition, that if a husband, in a rest home, his wife is in the house of the poor. ”

The 11-to-9 vote in the Finance Committee arrived shortly after midnight and was long party.

The bill, which would change 30 years of Medicare and Medicaid, is of fundamental importance for the Republicans’ compensation scheme in the budget. It would cut projected spending for Medicaid, the health program for people with low income, $ 182 billion dollars, or 19 percent over the next seven years. There would be planned spending for Medicare, the insurance program for the elderly and disabled, $ 270 billion, or 14 percent over a period of seven years.

Even more important that these figures are the revolutionary political changes proposed by Republicans in both chambers of Congress. They are currently dismantling the Medicaid program and give each state a fixed amount of money, grant or block for the financing of health care systems for the poor, with few federal requirements.

It would be the largest disease market to new forms of competition in faith that millions of seniors are enrolled voluntarily in the field of medical care and other private health insurance. Republicans say these private plans are far more effective than Medicare.

Mr. Clinton focused on two proposals, the beneficiaries of Medicaid. One, that a house bill, repeal of the 1988 Act requires that certain States to protect income and assets of certain elderly, whose husband live in care centres. The other proposal, took place in the Senate and House versions of legislation, repealing the Federal tough standards for care facilities in the written law in the year 1987, after the congress documented uncertain health conditions in the partitions institutions.

Republicans say that state officials may, at the sight of confidence for the welfare of its citizens and the definition and implementation of standards of care. But in his speech today, President Clinton has painted the worst picture of what could pass under the Republican proposals.

“Each government may force people whose husbands or women, to give care to their car, their furniture, even the house of her husband for any medical assistance,” said Clinton. “Anything they have worked throughout their lives, no longer there. ”

The original version of the Senate bill did not contain provisions for the protection of income and assets of spouses of home care Medicaid population. But by voice vote on the Finance Committee an amendment proposed by Senator Kent Conrad, Democrat of North Dakota, to keep such provisions in the legislation.

Without such safeguards, M. Conrad said, “people are coerced, or divorce of their homes to avoid the misery.” For years, in some federal states have tried to the Authority to the introduction of liens on homes occupied by the husband of the care facility residents, to help offset the costs of such treatment .

Medicaid, conducted jointly by the federal government and states that pays two-thirds of people living in care centres to one day determined. The annual costs for care of a person in a care facility is an average of $ 38000, M. Clinton said.

Mr. Clinton said the Republican administration’s budget plan would “ruin the quality of health care for the elderly” by the repeal of uniform national standards for Medicaid in 1987. Mr. Clinton did not mention, but Republicans should country, their own standards in areas largely by the federal government.