Alliance to Congress: Pass the Credit for Caring Act

Alliance Daily

The National Alliance for Care at Home has joined with a group of likeminded organizations to urge Congress to enact financial relief for family caregivers by including the bipartisan, bicameral Credit for Caring Act (S. 3702/H.R. 7165) in any tax legislation you advance in the 119th Congress. This legislation would create a new, non-refundable federal tax credit for eligible working family caregivers to help address the financial challenges of caregiving.

Family caregivers are the backbone of services and supports in this country. They help make it possible for older adults, people with disabilities, and veterans to live independently in their homes and communities. The physical, emotional, and financial challenges they face in their caregiving roles cannot be overstated. Family caregivers are of all ages, races, and ethnicities and cut across all segments of our population. This is an ageless and nonpartisan issue.

Family caregivers provide about $600 billion annually in unpaid labor to their loved ones. They face out-of-pocket expenses to assist their loved ones as well as potential income and retirement savings foregone. An AARP report found that family caregivers spend, on average, 26 percent of their income on caregiving expenses or over $7,200 annually. Their assistance helps save taxpayers billions of dollars by helping to delay or prevent expensive nursing home care and unnecessary hospital stays. Family and others who provide care for veterans spend on average $11,500 of their personal income on out-of-pocket costs related to caregiving each year.

The Credit for Caring Act would create a new, non-refundable federal tax credit of up to $5,000 for eligible working family caregivers to help address the significant financial impact of caregiving. Eligible caregivers caring for loved ones of all ages could receive the credit if the care recipient meets certain functional or cognitive limitations or other requirements. This tax credit would help working family caregivers regardless of whether they live with their loved one or if their loved one is a dependent.

Family caregivers need support as they take on the costs and responsibilities associated with caregiving. Therefore, we urge Congress to enact the Credit for Caring Act.

Hospice Special Focus Program: Identifying Challenges and Best Practices for Success

Certain details of the Hospice Special Focus Program (SFP) remain somewhat unknown, as the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has only provided very limited information so far about its structure and implementation. This leaves many hospice agencies with unanswered questions and concerns. However, understanding the information we do have at this time can help hospice agencies comply.

Join one of the most well-known home health & hospice consultants — Beth Noyce, RN, BSJMC, BCHH-C, COQS — for an insightful webinar on the key components of the Hospice SFP. Learn about key risk factors and explore best practices to help protect your agency from noncompliance.

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Home Health 2025 Outlook Webinar

January 8 at 10 a.m. MT

The year ahead is likely going to be another exciting one for home health providers, fraught with challenges and filled with opportunity. They’ll have to consider how to mitigate fee-for-service rate cuts, and also how they will win better contracts with Medicare Advantage plans. Another consideration is how to find ways to grow with staffing constraints, and also hit the right chords with technology adoption.

The home health landscape changes every year. Prepare for 2025 with this webinar, as we are joined by top minds from the industry.

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Home Health, Hospice Leadership Lays Out 2025 Priorities

Home Care Magazine / By Hannah Wolfson
 
Stopping Medicare cuts, ensuring Medicare Advantage beneficiaries have good access to care, passing groundbreaking hospice legislation and bringing homecare into the forefront are all priorities for the newly-formed National Alliance for Care at Home, said CEO Steve Landers.

“We’ve got to start improving access to home health care, and the way that we do that is we end this march of payment cuts that are being set forward by Medicare,” Landers said at the Alliance’s Homecare and Hospice Conference and Expo, which was held in October in Tampa, Florida.

The event was originally organized by the National Association for Homecare and Hospice (NAHC), which merged this summer with the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization (NHPCO) to form the new group. The expo included a handoff from NAHC President Bill Dombi to Landers. 

The new organization plans to highlight the patient and family perspective to advocate for home health in Washington and beyond, which Landers called a “life or death issue.”
Landers said the new alliance has the opportunity to have a stronger voice, and that he will add his own clinical perspective to his leadership and conversations with regulators and legislators.

“I'm also a family caregiver and have my own personal experiences with homecare and hospice that have instructed how I think about these things,” Landers said. “There is every opportunity here to get stronger, to try to make a bigger impact. … We need to find another way to tell these stories, to somehow get somebody to listen.” 

This will require getting frontline workers, patients and their families into the offices of decision-makers to tell their stories, Landers said. It may entail additional partnerships with state associations to focus on local advocacy, as well as sharing data from studies that show the positive outcomes in-home care has on patients’ lives. 

The alliance has automatically enrolled members of both legacy organizations, but Landers said that for renewals or new members, participants will be required to sign an attestation that says they have a program in place for quality and compliance, that they monitor the Office of Inspector General’s expulsion list and don’t take referrals or staff from organizations on that list and that they strive to participate in Medicare’s quality reporting programs.

“In order to make a difference on behalf of our members and make a difference on behalf of the people that need care at home, we have to have as credible and high integrity of a voice as possible,” Landers said.

Landers spoke before the results of the election were known or the final rule on home health payments was released by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. But even then, he said it would be important for advocates and providers to work for the long haul.

“We've got to wake ourselves up … and just keep our energy up, keep our voices up," he said. "So many people are depending on us, and they're hidden. The people that depend on home health and hospice care programs—they're hidden. They're sick, they're in their homes, mostly. Their families are stressed. … We’ve got to keep the volume up and keep telling the story.”…

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