New Letter to Rangel, Waxman, Miller from National Seniors Coalition Outlines Concerns With House Tri-Committee Health R...( JOPLIN Mo. July 8 -- In a new lett...),Health

JOPLIN, Mo., July 8 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- In a new letter to the three key leaders shaping the developing U.S. House of Representatives' health reform bill - Ways and Means Chairman Charles Rangel (D-NY), Energy and Commerce Chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Education and Labor Chairman George Miller (D-CA) - the Coalition to Protect Senior Care (CPSC) expressed concern that the legislative discussion draft, as now proposed, could harm seniors' care, cut thousands of key frontline care jobs, and undermine the ability to sustain quality improvement programs already benefiting patients nationwide.

"As front-line caregivers - those who provide nearly 80 percent of direct patient care in America's nursing homes - we at the Coalition to Protect Senior Care (CPSC) are writing to ask for your help in ensuring that the health care reform debate now at hand stay focused on the fact that adequate, stable Medicare funding and patient outcomes go hand in hand," says the letter to Reps. Rangel, Waxman and Miller. "From our perspective, what is at stake in this debate is the ability of facilities to maintain sufficient workforce levels, to sustain comprehensive quality improvement programs, and to continue caring for our patients and residents now, and in the future."

Lisa Cantrell, a co-founder of the National Association of Health Care Assistants (NAHCA), and a national spokesperson for the CPSC, pointed out that while the Coalition strongly supports comprehensive health care reform and shares the House leaders' goals for change, "We are concerned that the current discussion draft limits nursing homes' role in health care reform only to that of a 'pay for,' and that the impact of such drastic reductions will be felt all the way to the frontline of care for our nation's most vulnerable elderly." In its letter to Rangel, Waxman and Miller, the CPSC refers to a new analysis by Avalere Health LLC which finds the draft Ho
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