Growing older Effectively: Information & Insights for Seniors and Caregivers
- House moving budget reconciliation to cut Medicaid and SNAP, with markups delayed amid advocate pressure.
- Medicaid work requirements would remove coverage from older adults, caregivers, and people with disabilities, delaying access.
- Executive order directs agencies to deprioritize enforcement of disparate impact liability, undermining civil rights protections for older adults.
- Social Security service cuts and SSA policies risk benefit disruptions, leaving millions unable to pay basic expenses; Justice in Aging sued.
From DC is Justice in Growing older’s weekly roundup of nationwide information and sources about points impacting older adults. To obtain From DC in your inbox as quickly as its revealed, join our mailing checklist.
Right here’s what we’re watching in Washington:
Home Stays Centered on Passing Laws to Intestine Medicaid and SNAP
This week, the Republican management and Home Committees met behind closed doorways to attempt to attain consensus on their insurance policies to enact the tax and spending cuts outlined of their price range decision.
Whereas the coverage particulars are nonetheless below wraps, the decision requires unprecedented cuts of greater than $1 trillion from Medicaid, the Supplemental Diet Help Program (SNAP), and different applications older adults depend on to satisfy their fundamental wants, all to finance tax breaks for companies and the wealthy and to extend dangerous immigration enforcement.
On Thursday, Home leaders introduced that the Vitality & Commerce Committee will delay its listening to to markup the price range laws that would come with Medicaid cuts till the week of Might twelfth. The Agriculture Committee’s consideration of SNAP cuts can also be seemingly delayed. Nonetheless, Speaker Johnson stays dedicated to passing a full price range reconciliation invoice earlier than Memorial Day.
The delay within the markups is due to the relentless efforts of advocates who’re making it clear that any cuts to Medicaid or SNAP will take fundamental well being care and meals help away from older adults, folks with disabilities, and their households.
We should proceed to share tales and knowledge and ask our members of Congress to carry the road and reject any cuts to Medicaid, SNAP, or different fundamental wants applications. Meet along with your native officers on the metropolis, county, and state ranges to teach them on what these applications imply for the older adults you serve, and ask them to relay that message to your Congressional delegation.
Share Justice in Growing older’s sources on Medicaid Protection and the Middle on Funds and Coverage Priorities’ new reality sheet that explains how the mix of cuts would imply increased prices and fewer assist for older adults, 8 million of whom have incomes beneath the poverty line.
New Evaluation Underscores that Medicaid Work Necessities Would Hurt Older Adults
Congressional Republicans are crafting a coverage to incorporate within the price range reconciliation invoice that may lower Medicaid by requiring working-age adults to work a sure variety of hours every month to get and keep protection. This coverage quantities to a job loss penalty, punishing individuals who lose their jobs or can not work by taking away their well being care.
As our reality sheet explains, work necessities will take away protection from older adults and other people with disabilities who’re already working, those that are retired or have issue discovering work, and household caregivers. Implementing work necessities additionally delays entry to protection for older adults age 65+ by slowing down program administration, together with well timed processing of Medicaid purposes.
New evaluation underscores that ladies caregivers, a lot of whom are older themselves and caring for older adults, are at specific threat of getting their protection taken away. Amongst adults with Medicaid who aren’t working, 80% are girls and 25% are age 50 to 64. The vast majority of these girls left the workforce because of caregiving and have little to no revenue.
Further new stories this week estimate the variety of folks whose Medicaid protection could be lower below work necessities. Based on a report from the Vitality & Commerce Committee Democrats, the Congressional Funds Workplace estimates that 2.5 million Medicaid enrollees would have their protection taken away. And a Commonwealth Fund report gives state-by-state estimates of projected protection losses, job losses, and financial hurt if Congress enacts a nationwide Medicaid work requirement.
New Government Order Targets Disparate Impression Legal responsibility
Final week, the Trump Administration issued a brand new govt order (EO) searching for to finish the usage of disparate impression legal responsibility below federal anti-discrimination legal guidelines.
Disparate impression discrimination happens when a facially impartial coverage or observe leads to an unjustified, detrimental disparate impression on members of a protected class. Disparate impression legal responsibility is a key civil rights instrument and a longstanding authorized principle upheld by courts in varied contexts, together with the Individuals with Disabilities Act and the Honest Housing Act.
Amongst different directives, the EO instructs federal businesses to 1) deprioritize enforcement actions that depend on disparate impression legal responsibility; 2) take steps to alter present laws and steerage incorporating disparate impression legal responsibility; and three) decide whether or not any federal authorities preempt state legal guidelines or insurance policies imposing disparate impression legal responsibility.
Justice in Growing older will proceed to observe this EO and others for his or her impacts on older adults.
New Report Highlights Harms of Social Safety Profit Disruptions
Based on new evaluation by the City Institute, disruptions in Social Safety advantages would go away about six million folks unable to cowl their fundamental month-to-month dwelling bills. Social Safety advantages financially assist retirees, disabled employees, and their dependents.
For the lowest-income beneficiaries, Social Safety accounts for about 75% or extra of their whole revenue. Many of those households have little financial savings to depend on if profit funds had been to be interrupted.
Latest actions by the Trump Administration threaten entry to Social Safety for older adults and others. To cease illegal cuts to Social Safety companies, Justice in Growing older, together with co-counsel Brown Goldstein & Levy LLP, filed a lawsuit final month towards the Social Safety Administration (SSA) and DOGE.
The lawsuit alleges that mass staffing reductions, insurance policies requiring people to hunt companies in-person, and the elimination of essential places of work inside SSA unlawfully hurt older adults and other people with disabilities.
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