Will the 2014 Mid-Term Election Results Affect the Future of the Home Care Industry?

As such, 2015 stands to be another important year for healthcare in the halls of Congress. The tenor of the healthcare debate will be reshaped in 2015 by a slim Republican majority in the Senate, which joins the House majority, to reassert Republican priorities. Certainly the makeup of Congress will inject new energy into efforts to repeal the ACA. While symbolic attempts to repeal the ACA will garner floor speeches, hearing statements and a possible showdown in the Senate or with the President, the repeal of this law is extraordinarily unlikely as any major controversial challenges to the repeal of this law will have to be embraced by at least a certain number of Senate Democrats in order to avoid a filibuster and to override the President’s ability to veto the ACA’s repeal.

Nevertheless, with the ACA as a backdrop, members of Congress are queued to take up major pieces of healthcare legislation in the first session of the 114th Congress including a permanent fix to the Sustainable Growth Rate (SGR) and the potential funding reauthorization of the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP). However, there are two sides of the legislative equation that have to be reconciled in order to move any bill in Congress today; an agreement on the desired policy elements and how to pay for them.