Dems resist GOP calls to repeal CLASS Act

Rep. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.) clashed with Health and Human Services (HHS) officials Wednesday over their decision not to implement the healthcare law’s CLASS program.

Pallone said HHS shouldn’t “play into the same negative theme” as Republicans who say the healthcare law is unworkable. The department should not have given up on the CLASS program, he argued, despite an actuarial report that said the program couldn’t be implemented in accordance with the healthcare law’s requirements.

Wednesday’s joint hearing of two Energy and Commerce Committee subcommittees gave Republicans a fresh opportunity to highlight the CLASS Act’s failure and push for its repeal. And though Democrats argued against repeal, Pallone was alone in challenging HHS’s decision.

{mosads}“I, personally, and many of us, do not agree with your decision to put this on hold,” Pallone told the HHS officials who oversaw the early efforts to implement the new program for long-term care insurance.

He said HHS should still convene an advisory committee on the CLASS program. The department hasn’t named anyone to the 15-member council, which also was created under the healthcare law, though Pallone said it has received more than 140 nominations.

HHS Assistant Secretary for Aging Kathy Greenlee said the council fell by the wayside along with the rest of the CLASS Act.

“I do not want to send a mixed message by saying we’re continuing to work on CLASS when we’re not,” she said.

Republicans have seized on HHS’s decision to abandon the program — Rep. Phil Gingrey (R-Ga.) admitted that he was “gleeful” over the CLASS Act’s demise because it saved tens of billions of dollars from a “Democratic sinkhole.” And as GOP lawmakers made the case for repeal, they also noted that CLASS’s solvency was in doubt even before it was included in the healthcare law.

Gingrey argued that Congress shoudn’t leave a “crack in the door” for an untenable program. “It would be a lot safer” to formally repeal CLASS, rather than leave it on the books but dormant, he said.

Democrats at Wednesday’s hearing resisted the push for repeal largely by reiterating that access to long-term care remains a problem and saying Republicans don’t have a better idea than CLASS — though, by HHS’s admission, CLASS also is not a feasible solution for providing long-term care.

Greenlee testified that repeal “would not serve a helpful purpose” and said HHS wants to work on a new approach to providing coverage for long-term care. 

Lawmakers seemed to have different understandings of how fully HHS had abandoned the program. Although Pallone charged that HHS went too far too fast, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) indicated that the program might find new life.

“CLASS has not been cancelled; it simply stands in recess,” Waxman said.