Podcast Center
Video Center
Webcasts
Resource Center
Events
August 11, 2015 at 11:36 AM
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton says the country should update the Medicare benefits package to encourage more use of home care, and to reduce the need for nursing home care.
See also: Medicaid to go after the home care market
“We don’t do enough through Medicare to help people get the care they need in their own homes,” Clinton said Friday in Los Angeles, at a meeting with home care workers. “We need to change how we provide long-term care and home health care.”
The policymakers who designed the current Medicare and Medicaid benefits packages believed that the best place for older people to be at the end of their lives was a nursing home, Clinton told the home care workers at the event, according to a video recording of the event posted on YouTube (which you can watch on the next page).
“Now we know that’s not the case,” Clinton said. “I believe we can come up with a better approach.”
See also: Packed Agenda For Health Insurers
Older people with complicated medical problems may need to be in a nursing home, but other older people should be able to stay in their own homes up until that point, Clinton said.
Supporting home care helps improve people’s quality of life, and “it saves money,” Clinton said.
The Service Employees International Union (SEIU), the group that organized the event, said home care workers, the people getting care, and the families of the people getting care all have a stake in improving home care workers’ pay and benefits.
