Build Back Better Bill Dead? What is Lost?

January 19, 2022

Sen Manchin Probably Killed the BBB Bill-

As the Voting Rights Bill is probably going to be killed by Senator Sinema & Manchin, Machin is also responsible for the probable death of the Build Back Better Bill.

IN December Senator Manchin, a Democrat from West Virginia and the crucial holdout vote on Build Back Better Bill announced, “I cannot vote to continue with this piece of legislation… I’ve tried everything humanly possible; I can’t get there.” Whether this is a death knell for the president’s legislative agenda or just a serious setback is still to be litigated.

President Biden had been in negotiations with Manchin, who has withheld his support for the bill, making him a key vote in the evenly divided chamber. Biden said Manchin has reiterated his support for the overall cost of the bill. He said negotiations are continuing but more time is needed.

Though Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has vowed to bring the Build Back Better bill up for this month, it is all but doomed. Even so, Democrats hope to revive it in some form that could win support from every member of their Senate caucus.

What Do Seniors Lose

**A senior suffering from deafness without hearing aide**

Hearing Aids for Seniors Gone

Medicare currently does not cover hearing, dental, or vision as it once did but the Build Back Better plan addresses costs for hearing. Changes would not begin until 2023, but it would allow for coverage of hearing aids — an expense that can range drastically, from $1,000 to a few thousand dollars.

Negotiating Drug Prices Gone

**Prescription Drug Prices Not Negotiated By US**

The Build Back Better Bill would allow Medicare to negotiate drug prices for medications available at a pharmacy or doctor’s office. The current process for determining drug prices varies for the type of medication and how long they have been on the market. This bill offers a few changes, such as imposing a penalty fee for drug companies that raise their prices faster than inflation and laying out the framework for price negotiations.

Lost -Changes in Home- and Community-Based Care.

The spending bill earmarked $150 billion for in-home and community services through Medicaid over the next decade. The BBB bill contains additional funding for a Medicaid program that provides home- and community-based care services for eligible elderly Americans and people with disabilities. According to Kaiser Family Foundation estimates, there are more than 800,000 people on Medicaid waiting lists for these services across the country.

Americans don’t always consider home and community-based care or long-term care when making their retirement plans, but they should. Already, a 65-year-old couple retiring could expect to pay $300,000 in retirement for healthcare alone, but that doesn’t include the cost of a homecare aide or nursing home which could amount to thousands of more dollars every month.

If Aging is Your Field Call Your Representative Now

To find your local representative and tell them to support Biden’s bill if you care about aging or caregivers or women or shoring up the frayed- fraught care infrastructure. I have done a series of blogs on the bill. Check them out now

Build Back Better Bill Could be Transformative- BUT -Running out of Time

December 15, 2021

Time About Out To Pass Build Back Better Bill

Biden’s Build Back Better Bill is dying. Decades of divestment have cost American families in time, opportunity, and money, with the greatest impacts landing on communities of color, seniors, the disabled, women, and LGBTQ+ people. Building a stronger, more equitable future requires investing in good jobs, quality care, education, and housing. Senator Manchin and Sinema are blocking Biden’s Bill.

The Build Back Better Bill includes significant investments in our children, families, elderly and disabled

Seniors will get New Medicare Hearing Benefit

Biden’s ill includes lowered drug prices, Medicare Part D Benefit Redesign according to Kaiser Foundation. But the bill also includes new Medicare benefits for seniors in:

Expanded Home & Community Based Care Included

Biden’s Build Back Better Bill , offers so much in caring for families, kids the elderly. In addition to expanding Child Tax Credit payments and ensuring the lowest income families receive the full benefit, would invest in-home- and community-based care services for the aging and people with disabilities; provide pre-k for 3 and 4 year-olds; invest in housing, child care, and nutrition programs; create good jobs, and so much more

Biden’s Bill would provide four weeks of paid medical leave, so the United States can join the rest of the industrialized world in giving its people the dignity of paid time off for a family or health emergency. So, if an aging parent or child is sick or there is a newborn, family can care for them and get paid.

Write or Call Your Congressman Fast Before Mansion and Sinema Destroy Biden’s Bill

Sign and send a letter to your Democratic senators: Care is infrastructure. The Build Back Better Act must include substantial investments in our families and communities.

Here are some quick tips when writing a personal letter or what to say on a call :

Keep your letter short or call and to the point;
Remind them that you are a constituent;
Share your personal story about your career as a care manager, a social worker a nurse, a geriatric professional and your client’s needing care, client’s caring for a loved one, or the plight of a care worker
Emphasize that the majority of Americans support investing in human infrastructure, include: expanding Child Tax Credit payments, and ensuring the lowest income families receive the full benefit, investing in-home- and community-based care services for the aging and people with disabilities; providing pre-k for 3 and 4 year-olds; investing in housing, child care, and nutrition programs; creating good jobs; and more;
Encourage them to keep pushing to ensure investments in the care economy remain in the Build Back Better Act.
PLEASE DO THIS NOW ESPECIALLY FOR SENIORS IF YOU WORK WITH THEM

FDA Proposal Would Allow Millions of Consumers to Buy Over-the-Counter Hearing Aids in Stores or Online

October 25, 2021

FDA to Allow Buying Hearing Aides over the Counter- But Free Hearing Benefits on Chopping Block in Care Infrastructure Bill

A long-awaited Food and Drug Administration proposal would allow millions of consumers to buy over-the-counter hearing aids in stores or online without a prescription or medical exam.

More than four years after Congress ordered the agency to allow over-the-counter hearing aids, it took the first step Tuesday to broaden access to more accessible and affordable devices for millions of patients with mild to moderate hearing loss. The agency’s proposal would create a new category of over-the-counter hearing aids and supersede state-level regulations that require patients to go through physicians or audiologists to get prescriptions and fittings for them.

Infrastructure Trapped in Party Line Clash

President Biden’s Care Infrastruce bill is now trapped in a party-line clash where hearing benefits under Medicare will be ditched as the GOP is pulling away from the centrists that voted for it. Nineteen votes for the bill came from Republicans 2 months ago, as the Republican party is opposed to the Care infrastructure Bill

Progressives Hold The Line for Care Infrastructures for Seniors, Women Families

House Democratic Progressives held the line in a weeklong standoff with Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who reversed course and canceled plans to vote on the infrastructure bill with the support of President Joe Biden. He told House Democrats the votes weren’t there to pass that bill without the larger social policy bill.

Biden Says Care Infrastructure Price Tag Must Come Down

President Biden told Democrats the initial $3.5 trillion price tag would have to be reduced, and that the talks ranged up to $2.3 trillion, a source familiar with the meeting said Centrist Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., floated a $1.5 trillion counteroffer that some decried as being too small. Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., has declined to say what she’d back, frustrating her colleagues.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said he aims to pass a bipartisan infrastructure bill and Democrats’ broader investment in the social safety net and climate policy by the end of October.
The House delayed a vote on the Senate-passed infrastructure proposal as progressives sought an agreement on the larger piece of President Joe Biden’s economic agenda.
Democrats are negotiating a compromise between centrists and progressives on a plan to invest in child care, paid leave, health care, education, and the fight against climate change.

If You Are a Woman or Work In Aging Call Your Congressman

Care Infrastructure may wait long if folks in health care and older constituents do not contact their congressman and tell them to support this bill. They control the votes for the bill, and you have to let them know you will only vote for them if they do. Common Cause has this easy way to find and contact your congressman. If you believe in Medicare and seniors’ right not to have their teeth rot, not hear their grandkids or be unable to read a book- do it now.

Sign up for my new free Webinar, How to Sign Up Concierge Clients When Adult Child Calls in Pain

3 Congressmen Blocking Bill to Lower Drug Prices Needed for Seniors

September 20, 2021

Congress Lowering Drug prices Biden’s Goal in Infrastructure Bill

Three Congressman voted against President Biden effort to lower drug prices, an issue that overwhelmingly affects seniors. Biden wants Medicare to be granted the power to negotiate lower drug prices, have pharmaceutical companies to face penalties if they raise prices faster than inflation, and a new cap on how much Medicare recipients have to spend on medications.

3 Moderate Democrats Plus all Republicans Oppose Biden’s Drug Price Affordability Bill

Yet when the Energy and Commerce vote on the drug-pricing language came up on Biden drug price

reduction plan this month the vote was 29-29, with three moderate Democrats joining Republicans to oppose it: Reps. Scott Peters of California, Kathleen Rice of New York and Oregon’s Schrader. Tie votes in Congress are usually insufficient to keep legislative provisions alive.

Schrader, who inherited a fortune from his grandfather who was a top executive at pharmaceutical giant Pfizer, has accepted large donations from big pharma during his seven terms in Congress.

Drug Price Soar While Seniors Can’t Afford Living in Fear

Outrage of older patients over soaring drug prices has done little if anything to slow medication prices ascent, with the retail price tag for brand name drugs widely used by older Americans

jumping by an average of 15.5 percent in 2015 — the fourth straight year with a double-digit increase, a new AARP Public Policy Institute report finds.

Drug price increases over the past 10 years, that AARP executive vice president for policy, strategy and international affairs called “just shocking,” included Ativan 1 mg tablets, the anti-anxiety drug, with price hikes of up to 2,873 percent between 2006 and 2015, and the antidepressant Wellbutrin XL 300 mg tablets, which increased by 1,185 percent. The retail price of Humulin U-500, a short-acting insulin product used to

treat diabetes, rose by 538 percent over the past 10 years, most of that in the past five years.

Seniors Also Pay over $4000 a Year for Health Insurance

That’s on top of the roughly $4,400 per year they paid for health insurance premiums and other healthcare services such as long-term care and visits to the doctor. Some seniors, though, may pay much more for their medications

Geriatric Care Managers Call Your Congress Person

Geriatric Care Managers who understand the importance of passing this bill. So call your Congressman and tell her him to vote for this bill, which so needed by elders in the US. Here is an easy way to do that

Biden’s Caregiver Infrastructure Plan Crumbling

June 16, 2021

Caregiver Infrastructure Bill in Shreds

President Biden’s caregiver infrastructure bill appears to be in deep trouble . In fact the entire bill in is jeopardy.

The president set his sights on a sweeping infrastructure bill that would both revamp the nation’s roads and bridges as well as boost spending on services including healthcare and child care — though Republicans reject the idea that those latter priorities even qualify for the label “infrastructure.

Republicans Do Not see Care As Infrastructure

Many Republicans question government funding for care of the elderly and children, especially at the levels Biden wants. He initially proposed $400 billion for elderly and disabled care, and another $200 billion for childcare. Republicans want this entire Caregiver infrastructure section removed from the bill.

Congressional leaders have a math problem to pass the bill. To get through the evenly split Senate under the normal process, legislation would need support from all of the Democratic caucus and at least 10 Republicans — or more if any Democrats defect. If Democrats try to approve legislation on their own using budget reconciliation, they cannot lose a single vote.

What Will Biden’s Investment Create- in Jobs and the Economy

What are these lawmakers questioning? Basically the women who hold up half the sky of care in the United States by doing it through their low paid or no paid jobs. Like American bridges these

caregivers are collapsing.

Sixty-five percent of the jobs — approximately 1.5 million jobs —resulting from Biden’s investment would be in child care, residential care, and home health care. An additional 225,000 jobs can be created or supported in sectors that support care work, and over 500,000 jobs would be supported in other sectors as direct care workers spend their wages on goods and services.

Biden’s Plan of investing $77.5 billion per year would support over two million new jobs, at an average cost of $34,496 per supported job. Over 10 years, this translates to 22.5 million new jobs. Annually, a $77.5 billion investment in new jobs translates into $220 billion in new economic activity.

If Aging is Your Field Call You Representative Now

So find your local representative and tell them to support Biden’s bill if you care about aging or caregivers or women or shoring up the frayed- fraught care infrastructure.I have done a series of blogs on the bill . Check them out now