Allison Lee, PHI’s federal policy and campaign manager, testified at the February 25 listening session on the reauthorization of the Older Americans Act. Read the full story

(L-R) Mark McClellan of the Brookings Institution, Carol Raphael of the Visiting Nurse Service of New York, Steven Dawson of PHI

Nearly two dozen eldercare experts convened in Washington, DC, on January 28 for a long-term care forum held at the Brookings Institution, a public-policy think tank. Read the full story

Hilda Solis

A July 9 New York Times editorial calls for home care aides to receive minimum wage and overtime protections under the Fair Labor Standards Act. As the Times notes, in 2007, the Supreme Court upheld a 1975 labor regulation that defined home care aides as “companions,” but that regulation can be reversed anytime by Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis. This is the second editorial the Times has published on the issue; the first appeared in January 2009. Read the full story

The Center for Personal Assistance Services (PASC) has issued a report titled Home and Community-Based Services: Public Policies to Improve Access, Cost, and Quality that offers suggestions for improving policy at both the state and federal levels.

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Senators Ron Wyden and Herb Kohl

For eldercare stakeholders, one of the most meaningful outcomes of the Senate debate on the federal recovery package may have been a floor discussion concerning the direct-care workforce.

In offering an amendment to the bill, a more robust version of Retooling the Health Care Workforce for an Aging America Act, Senator Herb Kohl (D-WI), Chairman of the Senate Special Committee on Aging, and Senator Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) extracted a promise from the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee that the needs of the long-term care workforce will be considered in health care reform. Read the full story

Capitol Hill

On Wednesday, the U.S. House and Senate reached a compromise on the economic recovery package, bringing the total cost to $789 billion.

Complete details were unavailable as of press time. According to various news reports, even though the deal had been struck, lawmakers still had not seen a final summary of the bill, which emerged from conference committee talks in a much expanded form, having doubled in size from roughly 778 pages to a whopping 1434 pages. Read the full story