I realize I am old-fashioned and completely behind the times, and really don’t understand how Congress works anymore, but consider this excerpt from “Healthwatch,” which is The Hill’s Healthcare blog, from earlier this week:
“Republicans are also challenging how much authority [Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen] Sebelius has to alter a new long-term care insurance program, which she acknowledges is ‘totally unsustainable’ in its current form. Sebelius said HHS will consider increasing premiums and tightening eligibility standards to make the Community Living Assistance Services and Supports (CLASS) Act solvent. …
Rep. Denny Rehberg (R-Mont.) recently sent a letter to Sebelius asking about her statutory authority to alter the CLASS Act. …
‘The secretary admitted the law made CLASS “totally unsustainable,”’ [Rep. Charles] Boustany [Jr. (R-La.)] said in a statement to The Hill. ‘Now she wants to rewrite the law through regulations to exclude individuals who meet the minimum earnings requirement specified in the law President Obama signed. The CRS [Congressional Research Service] report warns this latest overreach could lead to lawsuits.’But a former congressional staffer who helped design the long-term care program says the CRS report is far from a smoking gun, arguing the CLASS Act was intentionally built to allow the HHS secretary to make adjustments to the program.
‘Until the administration rolls out the program, you won’t know the answer to the sustainability question,’ said Connie Garner, a former top staffer for the late Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.).‘The legislation does not present you with a program yet — it gives the secretary parameters to design one,’ Garner said.”
So, Congress passed a bill setting up a program that even its supporters now admit is “totally unsustainable,” but that is okay because the bureaucrats of HHS can just rewrite the program. After all, according to one of Senator Kennedy’s former staffers, the bill “does not present you with a program”. Apparently, that’s up to the bureaucrats. Congress just sets broad “parameters.” The bureaucrats “design” the program, which in this case means setting premiums and eligiblity standards different than those in the bill that Congress passed.
It seems to me, if Congress passes a bill establishing a program that is “totally unsustainable,” because of the eligibility standards and premiums that Congress set, that Congress ought to fix it, not a bunch of bureaucrats. How else are we going to know what eligibility standards and premiums Congress wants? Or whether Congress might decide it doesn’t want the program if the original eligibility standards and premiums don’t work.
But, I guess that’s not the way it works in Washington – especially when the Congress we have today is a little bit different than the Congress that set up the unsustainable program in the first place.
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Update (3/31/11 12:50 pm): The first name of HHS Secretary Sebelius is "Kathleen," not Catherine. I have corrected it.
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