Grassley on Caregiving

Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA) is expected to chair the Senate Finance Committee in the 108th Congress, making him a key player on health care issues (story). Grassley has a lengthy record of involvement in aging, caregiving and other health care issues and was instrumental in passage of the Family Caregivers Act. During the filming of & Thou Shalt Honor, he visited with a delegation of family caregivers. The following are excerpts of his remarks at that session:

Grassley meets with caregivers

Sen. Grassley: I have an experience in my family. I have two sisters and a younger brother. My younger brother had a stroke, about three years ago, and was in a Veteran's hospital for quite a while, but came home to my younger sister's home and between my younger sister and her older sister that lives in another home, but in the same community, they have been taking care of him, until just recently. He had to go back to the hospital because he had some fluid on his heart, but we hope he comes back now and they'll be able to resume their family caregiving.

Obviously I've been interested in it because of my family caregiver's support legislation that I got passed as part of the Older Americans Act last year, but I think we have 22 million family caregivers in the United States and we have not recognized, not only the quality of care, but more importantly, the economic value of what they do.

(Also important is) quality of care, because I've never met a single person in my life that said I'm just dying to get into a nursing home. Keep people in their home, among friends, relatives, whatever the case might be of family caregiving. But also I know that family caregivers don't do it to save money for taxpayers, but it saves a heck of a lot of money, from various programs -- Medicare, Medicaid, just to name two.

You mentioned hearing aids, eyeglasses, etc. We are looking at bringing what we would call Medicare, made in1965, to the 21rst century practice of medicine. Cause, you know, in 1965 the practice of medicine was to put everybody in hospitals. Now, the practice of medicine is to keep people out of hospitals. That doesn't only involve prescription drugs, that would involve things like hearing aids and eyeglasses as well.

Baby Boomers are going to have a rude awakening. They've lived a life of employment with their employer providing health insurance for them. Then, when they go to the 1965 model of Medicare, they're going to be mighty disappointed. And so, we want to bring Medicare into the 21rst century.

Grassley with Executive Producer Dale Bell

One of the reasons that I'm promoting the legislation like the National Family Caregivers Act, the long term care insurance tax deduction, the $3000 tax credit, is quite frankly, I don't think that the government's going to respond to the need and I want to encourage people to manage some of their own risks.

Not only because I think that they'll have some protection, but because I think that they'll have a higher quality of life. And in the process of our doing that, we bring the dynamics of the private sector into it and maybe get a lot of instruments that you do not have, with the rigidity that you have through government programs, but quite obviously Medicare and Medicaid are going to be very basic. And I don't, we just know that we have to do more about Medicare.

But even if we do the very best we can on the Medicare program, I don't see it as being an adequate enough program with 77 million Baby Boomers going into retirement. So that's why I want to encourage, through the private sector, people to do some on their own.