Frank Lautenberg: “today the House Commerce Committee, the Subcommittee on Health and Environment, will consider legislation introduced by…”

“today the House Commerce Committee, the Subcommittee on Health and Environment, will consider legislation introduced by the chairman of that subcommittee that also breaks the bipartisan budget agreement. The budget agreement calls for $1.5 billion to ease the impact of increasing Medicare premiums on low-income beneficiaries. This provision was included because the budget agreement calls for phasing in increases in Medicare premiums to accommodate the shift of home health care expenditures from part A to part B. We were worried because there is going to have to be, in order to provide the solvency that we found for Medicare to continue, or the Medicaid programs, we had proposed expanding Medicaid premium coverage for Medicare recipients who had incomes of 120 to 150 percent of poverty. That is pretty modest going. The final agreement threw out the specifics of the premium proposal. However, it did call for spending the $1.5 billion on whatever policy Congress chose to enact. But that was not the understanding. Regretfully, the House committee with jurisdiction of Medicaid will only include $300 to $400 million for this provision, one we labored long and hard over. It is another clear violation of the budget agreement, and it is very troubling.”