Washington has a lot of work to do on health care. The current battle on Obamacare subsidies is a stark reminder of that fact.
While that issue is divisive, there are opportunities to find consensus on health care such as protecting Medicare’s home health benefit, which is widely supported by Americans of all backgrounds and political persuasions.
As one of the most popular parts of Medicare, home health care allows patients to recover in the comfort and safety of their homes, typically after a hospitalization, or receive care to prevent hospitalization. This is good news for patients who don’t want to move to a nursing home or other institutional setting. And importantly, it eases pressure on crowded hospitals and saves the Medicare program (and taxpayers) money by delivering care in a cost-effective setting.
Despite the obvious fiscal, clinical, and human benefits of keeping people at home as they age, Medicare continues to cut funding for this highly valued program. Just last month, Medicare finalized another round of cuts to home health care in 2026.
Patients are already feeling the negative cascade from cuts to the program by the last Administration. By continuing to pull the rug out from under home health providers, fewer patients will be able to access the home health services they need, leading to worse outcomes for patients and virtually guaranteeing higher costs down the road. Fewer home health options mean more patients kept in hospitals, longer nursing home stays, and even more pressure on an already overburdened health system.
Patients who don’t receive home health care see 35% higher hospital readmissions and experience 43% higher mortality rates. That’s devastating for families, and costly for taxpayers. Every additional hospital admission or nursing home stay drives Medicare spending higher. Frankly, that’s a terrible deal for everyone involved, and it makes no sense when Washington is already staring down unsustainable deficits.
There’s another serious problem: years of funding cuts choke competition and push small businesses out of the market, with rural markets bearing the brunt of it. On top of stubbornly high inflation, Medicare cuts to home health threaten to force some home health providers to shut their doors altogether, adding to the more than 1,000 home health agency closures in recent years.
Texas shows exactly what’s at stake. More than 380 home health agencies in our state have closed since 2019. In that same period, over 233,000 Texas patients lost access to home health care. And nearly half of all patients referred for home health after a hospitalization never received it. That’s not because doctors don’t recommend home health care – it’s because there aren’t enough providers left to deliver it.
On top of this, the government’s own actuaries project that by 2027, nearly half of the remaining providers will be operating in the red. That’s a recipe for consolidation and collapse. Instead of encouraging a competitive, patient-driven marketplace, home health agency doors close, leaving some rural Texans and communities without any home-based care options at all.
The federal government should not be in the business of picking winners and losers in the healthcare marketplace.
While the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has taken some steps recently to work with home health stakeholders to address steep cuts to the benefit, a long-term policy solution is needed to make home health sustainable for our aging society.
The bottom line is simple: families want their loved ones to age at home. And they want access to Medicare home health services to make that possible.