Letters: Louisiana lawmakers stand up for home health

Louisiana has a long history of supporting skilled home health care, a valuable service that allows our aging friends and neighbors to remain healthy and independent in their homes. Louisiana is home to two of the nation’s leading home health care companies. We are also fortunate to have lawmakers who understand that home health care is cost-effective and a patient-preferred.

This support is incredibly important to the more than 65,000 Louisianans on Medicare who depend on home health care. Home health care reduces hospital readmissions and is vital to our economy. Home health employs more than 20,000 workers with an economic impact of nearly a billion dollars annually in Louisiana.

Today, we can count another blessing: the leadership of U.S. Sens. John Kennedy and Bill Cassidy as well as U.S. Reps. Ralph Abraham and Garret Graves, who have helped introduce federal legislation that would protect Medicare home healthcare from a new payment policy that threatens the care so many here want and need.