Page:United States Statutes at Large Volume 110 Part 6.djvu/643

 CONCURRENT RESOLUTIONS—JUNE 13, 1996 110 STAT. 4465 not include tax increases in any form, including transfers of spending from the Medicare Part A program to the Part B program; and (2) the commission should report to Congress its recommendations prior to the adoption of a concurrent budget resolution for fiscal year 1998 in order that the committees of jurisdiction may consider these recommendations in fashioning an appropriate congressional response. SEC. 409. SENSE OF CONGRESS ON MEDICARE TRANSFERS. (a) FINDINGS. —Congress finds that— (1) home health care provides a broad spectrum of health and social services to approximately 3,500,000 Medicare beneficiaries in the comfort of their homes; (2) the President has proposed reimbursing the first 100 home health care visits after a hospital stay through Medicare Part A and reimbursing all other visits through Medicare Part B, shifting responsibility for $55,000,000,000 of spending from the Hospital Insurance Trust Fund to the general revenues that pay for Medicare Part B; (3) such a transfer does nothing to control Medicare spending, and is merely a bookkeeping change which artificially extends the solvency of the Hospital Insurance Trust Fund; (4) this transfer of funds camouflages the need to make changes in the Medicare program to ensure the long-term solvency of the Hospital Insurance Trust Fund, which the Congressional Budget Office now states will become bemkrupt in the year 2001, a year earlier than projected in the 1995 report by the Trustees of the Social Security and Medicare Trust Funds; (5) Congress will be breaking a commitment to the American people if it does not act to ensure the solvency of the entire Medicare program in both the short- and long-term; (6) the President's proposal would force those in need of chronic care services to rely upon the availability of general revenues to provide financing for these services, making them more vulnerable to benefits chsinges than under current law; and (7) according to the National Association of Home Care, shifting Medicare home care payments from Part A to Part B would deemphasize the importance of home care by eliminating its status as part of the Hospital Insurance Trust Fund, thereby undermining access to the less costly form of care. (b) SENSE OF CONGRESS. —I t is the sense of Congress that in meeting the spending targets specified in the budget resolution. Congress should not accept the President's proposal to transfer spending from one part of Medicare to another in its efforts to preserve, protect, and improve the Medicare program. SEC. 410. SENSE OF CONGRESS REGARDING CHANGES IN THE MEDI- CARE PROGRAM. (a) FINDINGS. —Congress finds that, in achieving the spending levels specified in this resolution— (1) the Public Trustees of Medicare have concluded that "the Medicare program is clearly unsustainable in its present form"; (2) the President has said his goal is to keep the Medicare Hospital Insurance Trust Fund solvent for more than a decade.

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