ANCOR staff made Capitol Hill visits on these and other long-term services’ issues this week in addition to its ANCOR grassroots alert. ANCOR and other disability and aging groups will do another round of Capitol Hill visits and grassroots phone-in on Thursday, October 8th following Senate Finance Committee adoption early next week of its health care plan.
Several important long-term supports and services provisions were included: (1) Senator Schumer’s (D-NY) Community First Choice state option; (2) Senator Cantwell’s (D-WA) Home and Community Balanced Incentives Act that temporarily increases the federal matching rate for HCBS for states that undertake structural reforms over five years to increase diversion for nursing homes, ICFs/MR, and other institutions through either a HCBS waiver or state plan amendment; (3) Senator Kerry’s (D-MA) provision to improve access to HCBS under the Medicaid’s 1915(j) state option –that would let states seek approval from HHS that place services on a par with nursing home and HCBS waiver eligibility criteria to offer “additional services” under the HCBS state and to offer these HCBS to individuals who make more than 150 percent of the federal poverty level (FPL) but no more than 300 percent of the supplemental security income (SSI) level, and (4) Senator Rockefeller’s (D-WV) Sense of the Senate that this Congress should address long-term services and supports in a comprehensive way that guarantees elderly and disabled individuals requiring the Department of Justice to perform an annual evaluation of state compliance with federal Olmsted laws. Work still continues on ANCOR’s NAC efforts to get language regarding the direct support professional workforce issue included in the Committee’s final bill as we did with the HELP Committee bill.
