Jay Rockefeller: “in responding, first of all, I say to my friend from Michigan, this is a resolution of the Congress as opposed to hard…”

“in responding, first of all, I say to my friend from Michigan, this is a resolution of the Congress as opposed to hard law. This is, I think, something by which the Senator is trying to express his views. Just a few moments ago I went through the policy aspects of why this had all happened. As the Senator from Michigan indicated, before 1980 it was divided between part A and part B, and then I described the conditions at that time. I described what the Congress did after that to improve Medicare's home health care benefit--remove the 100-day limit and the 3-day hospitalization requirement, and, as a result, financing of all home health care services were shipped into part A. Then I said, even though part A was never intended to pay for long-term home health care benefits, and then I went on to say that the President's proposal restores the financing of the home health care benefit back to the Congress' original intent. So much for the policy. I think, frankly, that it is all right to talk about the politics of this issue. Mr. President, we did not hear anything about this issue last year. I guess that is because back then the Republicans were proposing it. In fact, every single House Republican who voted for last year's Republican budget voted in favor of a very similar transfer of funding for home health care. I am talking about the politics because I am trying to question the underlying meaning of this resolution.”