79R11542 CME-D

By:  McClendon                                                  H.C.R. No. 1  



CONCURRENT RESOLUTION
	WHEREAS, The State of Texas has long prioritized efforts to 
protect and provide for the well-being of its elderly residents; 
unfortunately, this worthy commitment has been compromised by 
federal law mandating the creation of a Medicaid estate recovery 
program; and
	WHEREAS, An estimated six million elderly in the United 
States required long-term care in 2000; while most Americans have 
at least some insurance to cover the costs of medical care, the 
private insurance available for long-term care generally provides 
very limited coverage, often only for "post-acute" care that 
immediately follows hospitalization, and studies indicate that the 
availability of even this limited private coverage is particularly 
low in Texas; and
	WHEREAS, Concurrently, long-term care is expensive, with the 
average cost of one year in a nursing home at approximately $40,000 
and expected to rise to more than $83,000 by 2010; as a consequence, 
many of our elderly citizens rely on publicly funded programs like 
Medicaid to help pay for their care; and
	WHEREAS, The Congressional Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act 
(OBRA) of 1993 required the states to establish a program to recover 
all or part of the costs of certain nursing facility and long-term 
care services from the estates of Medicaid beneficiaries; to 
qualify for Medicaid coverage an individual must meet very strict 
income and resource eligibility standards; in effect, estate 
recovery is a "death tax" levied against the families of elderly 
beneficiaries who exhausted most of their assets to pay for their 
own care and, ultimately, were forced to rely on Medicaid as a last 
resort; and
	WHEREAS, Regrettably, the estate recovery program is not an 
effective means of managing states' increasing Medicaid costs; a 
study conducted between 1997 and 1998 by the North Carolina 
Department of Health and Human Services concluded that the amount 
collected by reporting states under estate recovery as a percentage 
of total 1998 Medicaid expenditures ranged from a low of .01 percent 
to a high of .83 percent; and
	WHEREAS, Medicaid is a critical safety net for thousands of 
low to moderate income elderly Texans who, much like the State of 
Texas, are confronted by the ever-increasing costs of long-term 
care; rather than pursuing these families for what little remains 
of their loved ones' assets, Congress should seek more sustainable 
and less punitive solutions to the nation's long-term care needs; 
now, therefore, be it
	RESOLVED, That the 79th Legislature of the State of Texas 
hereby respectfully urge the United States Congress to eliminate 
the requirement that states implement as part of their Medicaid 
state plan an estate recovery program; and, be it further
	RESOLVED, That the Texas secretary of state forward official 
copies of this resolution to the president of the United States, to 
the speaker of the house of representatives and the president of the 
senate of the United States Congress, and to all the members of the 
Texas delegation to the congress with the request that this 
resolution be officially entered in the Congressional Record as a 
memorial to the Congress of the United States of America.