House Finance Committee Hears Arguments on Medicaid Home Health and Nursing Home Funding
Rep. Laurie Harding introduced HB 1355 at the request of the NH Health Care Association and Granite State Home Health Association. At the hearing before the House Finance Committee this week, only AARP and Heritage Case Management testified in opposition, citing concern about flexibility to transfer funds out of the home health or nursing home lines to cover other long-term care services.
GSHHA testified that home health providers have reluctantly accepted the reality that home health rates are not fully funded, but “What we cannot accept as reasonable is even further reduction in home health appropriations by transfer of funds out of our budget line...during the course of a fiscal year when a proportionate discount is being applied to our rates. Such transfers are made by DHHS in order to cover the cost of other long-term support services that are not governed by any rate-setting methodology or cost control strategies. We don’t believe such was the intent of the Legislature when the budget was adopted.”
A work session on the bill has been scheduled for January 26 and the bill is scheduled for a committee vote on February 4.