On February 9, Congress passed and the President signed a sweeping spending bill that will fund the government through March 23 and raise the spending caps imposed by the Budget Control Act of 2011 for two years, paving the way for a longer-term spending agreement. The legislation—the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2018 (P.L. 115-123, BBA of 2018)—also suspends the government’s cap on borrowing through March 2019, and contains a number of health care provisions important to people with Medicare and their families.
Below, please find the Medicare Rights Center’s preliminary analysis of the BBA of 2018, which focuses on changes to Medicare and other programs serving older adults and people with disabilities, including 1) Appropriated Programs, 2) Health Care Extenders and Policies, 3) The CHRONIC Care Act, 4) Excluded Priorities, 5) Offsets, and 6) Next Steps.
