CMA Issue Brief: Medicare and Family Caregivers
The Center for Medicare Advocacy (CMA) has written an issue brief, "Medicare and Family Caregivers," as part of collaborative work to advance the RAISE Family Caregivers Act.
The RAISE Act directs the Department of Health and Human Services to develop and maintain a national family caregiver strategy that identifies actions and support for family caregivers in the United States. CMA's issue brief explores the role Medicare does, and could, play in supporting older and disabled beneficiaries and their caregivers, and makes several recommendations, including:
- Ensure the scope of current Medicare home health benefits, generally, and home health aides, specifically, are actually provided. Simply put, ensure that current law is followed;
- Create a new stand-alone home health aide benefit that would provide coverage without the current skilled care or homebound requirements, using Medicare’s existing infrastructure as the vehicle for the new coverage; and
- Identify other opportunities for further exploration within and without the Medicare program, including additional Medicare revisions, demonstrations, and initiatives overseen by the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (CMMI).
The issue brief was written with support from The John A. Hartford Foundation.
To learn more and to download the brief, click here.
