Posted: Sun Oct 30, 2005 10:39 pm Post subject: Alert:Important cuts in SSI planned by budget reconciliation
This week's planned entitlement program cuts will include children, grandparents, and of course, that all-time kick-them-while-they-are-down conservative favorite, SSI recipients. This will be done while Rosa Parks http://tinyurl.com/an835 is resting in state in Washington. More details, see http://www.cbpp.org/10-28-05bud.htm
Quote:
Unshared Sacrifice: Who’s Hurt, Who’s Helped, and What’s Spared Under the Emerging House Budget Reconciliation Plan,10/28/05
"Who’s Hurt
The House budget reconciliation bills call for significant sacrifices from low-income families and individuals, including:
* Low-Income food stamp recipients: The bill approved by the House Agriculture Committee would deny food stamps — the nation’s most important anti-hunger tool — to an estimated 300,000 poor individuals through two provisions that would cut the program by a total of $844 million over the next five years.
* The bill would deny food stamps to 225,000 individuals in working families whose savings are just above food stamp eligibility limits or whose income is just above the income limits before housing and work expenses are taken into account, but below the limits after those expenses are taken into account.
* The bill would deny food stamps to 70,000 legal immigrants who have been in the United States between five and seven years, including immigrants who work in low-wage jobs and need food stamps to make ends meet. The new restrictions apply only to adults, but immigrant and U.S. citizen children whose parents lose food stamps as a result of this provision would be affected as well, since the entire household would be less able to purchase adequate food. Some of those affected would be elderly immigrants.
* Low-income Medicaid beneficiaries, including children, pregnant women, the elderly, and people with disabilities. The bill approved by the House Energy and Commerce Committee includes significant cuts to Medicaid, with a substantial portion coming from allowing states to impose new costs on low-income Medicaid beneficiaries for health care services and needed medications and to restrict the health care services Medicaid covers. (Final figures on the precise level of Medicaid cuts are not yet available from CBO.)
Children would be especially affected: the Energy and Commerce proposal would roll back federal benefits and cost sharing standards for about six million children who rely on Medicaid for their health care.[1] Under the bill, states would be permitted to
* For the first time, charge premiums for children to participate in Medicaid and require cocopayments for children’s doctor’s visits, hospital stays, lab work, and other health care services that are not considered preventive care. Premiums and cocopaymentsts could be applied to children under age six with income above 133 percent of the poverty line and children age six to 18 with income just above the poverty line. (The poverty line for a family of three is just $1,341 per month.) This is a significant change from current law, which exempts children from cocopaymentsyments and bars premiums for nearly all categories of Medicaid beneficiaries (including children). Under the House bill, the only restriction on these fees is an overall cap that limits totalcopaymentsums and co care.
* Impose new copayments for prescription drugs for children. The House proposal would allow states to charge all children — including those with incomes below the poverty line — for drugs not on a state’s “preferred” drug list. Also, children with incomes just above the poverty level (or above 133 percent of the poverty level copaymentsr children) could face copayments even for preferred drugs. The House proposal also increases the maximum level at which prescription drug copayments can be set. Under the proposal, these fees will rise much faster than the income of low-income families.
* Restrict the health care services available to children with incopayments above the poverty line.[2] These children would no longer have protections under the Early and Periodic ScopaymentsDiagnosis and Treatment (EPSDT) provisions of the current Medicaid rules, which guarantee that children receive the medical services they need. As a result, states would be allowed to terminate or severely limit coverage for a wide range of services and medical devices, such as mental health services, eyeglasses, hearing aids, and other therapeutic services.
Low-income parents, the elderly, and people with disabilities also could be asked to pay premiums and higher copayments for health care and prescription drugs and could see the health care services covered by Medicaid reduced. Some of the increased costs and restricted benefit packages could affect people with incomes well below the poverty line. Many poor adults — including those with disabilities — could face increased cocopaymentss for doctor’s visits and prescription drugs. Again, these fees are slated to rise faster than these individuals’ incomes. Also, states would have new flexibility to limit the health care services covered by Medicaid for most non-institutionalized adult beneficiaries.
These cuts are likely to restcopaymentss to needed care. Research consistently shows that when low-income Medicaid beneficiaries are required to pay premiums out of their limited budgets to participate in the program, many are unable to pay and lose coverage entirely. Research also shows that even modest copayments for health care services and medications lead a significant number of people to go without needed health services and drugs.
* Children owed child support from non-custodial parents. The bill approved by the House Ways and Means Committee would cut funding for child support enforcement efforcopaymentsillion over the next five years. The Congressional Budget Office projects that while states will replace a portion of the lost federal funds with their own funds, this federal funding reduction would lead states to cut back their efforts to enforce non-custodial parents’ child support obligations. CBO estimates that as a result of these cuts, $7.9 billion in child support payments over the next five years — and $24 billion over the next ten years — that would have been collected in the absence of these cuts will now go uncollected.
Collecting child support is often most difficult (and thus most expensive) in the cases of low-income children because their non-custodial parents are more likely to have unstable employment and low incomes. Thus, as states scale back enforcement efforts, there is a strong risk that states will devote less effort to difficult (and costly) cases and, therefore, that low-income children could bear the brunt of the cutbacks and receive much less of the support they are owed.
* Poor individuals with disabilities. The House Ways and Means bill would require people who are owed back benefits from the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program — the program that provides basic income assistance to poor elderly individuals and poor people with disabilities — to wait up to an additional year to receive all of the benefits they are owed.
SSI recipients often are owed back benefits that accrue while they wait for the Social Security Administration to determine whether they meet SSI’s stringent disability standard, which can take many months in some cases. The House bill would require SSI recipients who are owed more than three months of back benefits to receive them in installments, rather than a single lump sum that would enable them to pay bills that accrued while they were waiting for SSA to process their application. (Under current law, only recipients owed more than 12 months in back benefits are required to receive them in installments.)
* Children in low-income working families who need child care assistance. Many children in low-income working families would lose access to child care assistance under the House Ways and Means bill. The House bill reauthorizes the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) block grant, significantly increasing the number of TANF-assisted parents that states must place in welfare-to-work programs. Yet to meet these new requirements — which CBO has previously estimated would cost states $6.1 billion over five years — the bill gives states fewer resources than prior versions of House TANF reauthorization bills, and less child care funding than is needed just to keep pace with inflation.
Because of inadequate child care funding under the House bill, states would need to divert existing child care resources away from low-income working families in order to cover the cost of providing child . . . numbers of TANF recipients participating in welfare-to-work programs. As a result, an estimated 270,000 fewer children in low-income working families not receiving TANF income assistance would receive child care assistance in 2010 than in 2004. [3]
* Foster children living with grandparents and other relatives. The House Ways and Means bill would eliminate federally funded foster care benefits for children who do not meet the foster care eligibility criteria based on their biological parents’ circumstances, but who do meet those criteria based on the circumstances of the relatives with whom they now reside. In some cases, grandparents and other relatives would receive TANF benefits on behalf of these children instead of foster care benefits (which are significantly higher). In other cases, states may continue to provide the full foster care benefit, but would have to fund those benefits entirely with state resources, forcing them either to increase state spending or reduce other benefits and services to abused and neglected children and troubled families. "
Additional Information on the House Reconciliation Proposals
Quote:
The following reports provide more in-depth analysis of the House reconciliation proposals and of the other issues raised by this paper:
Food Stamps
House Agriculture Committee Reconciliation Package Targets Food Stamp Program for Cuts, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, October 27, 2005: http://www.cbpp.org/10-27-05fa.htm
Child Support, Child Care, SSI, Foster Care
Ways and Means Proposal: “Chairman’s Mark” Targets Key Low-Income Programs, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, October 25, 2005: http://www.cbpp.org/10-25-05wel.htm
Ways and Means Committee Proposes Deep Cuts in Child Support, Center for Law and Social Policy (includes state-by-state data on the child support funding cuts and the projected loss in child support collections), October 27, 2005: http://www.clasp.org/publications/child_support_cuts.pdf
Medicaid
Energy and Commerce “Chairman’s Mark” Imposes New Costs on Low-Income Medicaid Beneficiaries, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities: http://www.cbpp.org/10-25-05health.htm
(revision to this report will be completed when the Committee completes action on its bill)
Health Opportunity Accounts for Low-In come Medicaid Beneficiaries: A Risky Approach, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, October 27, 2005: http://www.cbpp.org/10-26-05health.htm
Cost-Sharing Provisions in the Energy and Commerce Medicaid Proposal: Key Issues for Children and Families, Georgetown University Health Policy Institute Center for Children and Families, October 26, 2005: http://www.cbpp.org/10-25-05health2.pdf
Getting Serious About Deficits? Calls to Offset Hurricane Spending Miss the Point; Balanced Set of First Steps Toward Fiscal Discipline Needed, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, October 6, 2005: http://www.cbpp.org/10-6-05bud2.htm
New IRS Data Show Income Inequality Is Again on the Rise, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, October 17, 2005: http://www.cbpp.org/10-17-05inc.htm
Economic Recovery Failed to Benefit Much of the Population in 2004, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, August 30, 2005: http://www.cbpp.org/8-30-05pov.htm
Joined: 17 May 2004 Posts: 288 Location: Baltimore, MD
Posted: Mon Oct 31, 2005 12:34 am Post subject:
Perhaps someone should let the Commissioner know that Congress wants to fight the budget deficit by delaying decisions in SSI cases. The longer it takes to process the claim, the longer Congress gets to hold onto the money. This alone should torpedo her plan to speed up the processing of claims.
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