How the Incoming Trump Administration Could Impact Home-Based Care

Home Health Care News | By Jim Parker

Questions always abound when a new presidential administration comes in, but Republicans’ focus on cost-cutting hold potential for home-based care — if providers can advocate for themselves in Washington. 

Though uncertainties abound when it comes to the Trump administration’s approach to health care, many notable policies have been implemented during Republican administrations. From the establishment of the Medicare Hospice Benefit under Ronald Reagan to the unveiling of Programs for All-Inclusive Care of the Elderly (PACE) under the first Bush administration, this track record can be source of optimism, according to Edo Banach, partner at Manatt Health, a division of the law firm Manatt, Phelps & Phillips, LLP.

“The optimistic note is that a lot of the positive things that have happened in health care over the last 30 years have happened under a Republican Congress, a Republican administration or both,” Banach told Home Health Care News. “I think we’re going to see an increase in opportunities when it comes to caring for vulnerable folks, people who have Medicare and Medicaid, people who are chronically and seriously ill. If the incoming administration wants to solve an economic problem, they can’t solve an economic problem without solving that problem. You’re not going to save money if you simply cut services, so you have to be smarter about the way that you deploy those services.”

Banach previously served as deputy director and senior leader at the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) during the Obama administration.

A key component of this is the Republican drive to cut costs, particularly as it pertains to the Medicare trust fund. Home-based care has a proven track record of reducing the total cost of care, which could lead to increased government investment in those services.

Hospice is a great example. Hospice care saves Medicare roughly $3.5 billion for patients in their last year of life, according to a joint report from the National Alliance for Care at Home and NORC at the University of Chicago.

Likewise, participants in the home health value-based purchasing model (HHVBP) have saved Medicare more than $1.38 billion over six years in nine states, according to CMS.

The same principle extends to palliative care. Home-based palliative care could reduce societal health care costs by $103 billion within the next 20 years, the nonprofit economic research group Florida TaxWatch said in a 2019 report…

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