Other Age Groups Demanding Help : Generational Fight Seen as Elderly Push for Benefits

The House defeat of a home-care plan for the elderly sets the stage for a potentially bitter clash of the generations in the next Congress, as a renewed push by senior citizens’ advocates for more government benefits collides with the growing demands of other age groups for help, including young families seeking affordable day care.

In killing the costly new home-care plan Wednesday and postponing action on other high-profile proposals for the aged, congressional leaders promised to look again next year at ways to help the elderly shoulder the burden of high medical costs.

But that promise may be hard to keep, many in Congress acknowledge.

‘Strong Resentments’

“There will be a tremendous competition for resources and not a hell of a lot of room,” said Rep. Leon E. Panetta (D-Monterey), who will become chairman of the House Budget Committee next year. “There are a lot of priorities, from deficit reduction to more spending for children’s programs and education and roads and bridges. If the money is just consumed on the elderly side, there will be strong resentments by other competing interests.”

Congress’ approval this session of the greatest expansion of Medicare in the program’s history has only heightened the impending clash.

For advocates of the elderly, the passage of that plan, which provides unlimited hospital stays and partial reimbursement for drug costs, indicates that the political climate is finally right to make big gains for their cause.

They are mounting massive lobbying campaigns to push for new government coverage of nursing home costs--the single greatest financial threat to the elderly--and subsidized care at home for invalids who cannot take care of themselves.

“We have no sense there is a feeling of generational hostility out there,” said Horace Deets, executive director of the American Assn. of Retired Persons, which has 29 million members. “We want to see better services across the board for everyone and not just for the elderly. Our board members are concerned about their children and grandchildren.”

Other Priorities

However, advocates of competing causes and some in Congress see the new Medicare expansion as an appropriate point at which to turn to other priorities.

In the next Congress, there will be especially strong demands for new federal spending on day care, greater outlays for education and programs to finance “affordable housing,” according to Panetta.

As proposed, the bill subsidizing home health care for the elderly would be financed by a tax increase of $28 billion over five years, with the money coming from higher payroll levies on workers making more than $45,000 a year. Many members of Congress are balking at setting aside such a large sum for one group.

Ten Democrats recently circulated a letter to their colleagues arguing strongly against the new home care benefit. “The earmarking of these taxes will make it harder to address other needs, such as the federal budget deficit, which threatens our long-term economic growth,” and the problems of families and children, it said.

Rep. Dan Rostenkowksi (D-Ill.), chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, said in calling for the defeat of the home-care bill that Congress had done as much as it could at this time for the elderly. “Congress should be proud of its record of providing economic security to our nation’s elderly,” he said.

Funded Through Premiums

Advocates of the elderly, who are pushing to make their issues part of the presidential campaign debate, dispute that assessment, citing the fact that all the additional Medicare benefits in the new plan will be funded through premiums and taxes on the beneficiaries themselves.

They assert that all age groups will benefit from the additional programs they want and that voters are willing to pay for them. In addition to the elderly, the home-care measure would provide at-home help for chronically ill children.

A majority of Americans has indicated in surveys a willingness to pay more in taxes for government-sponsored long-term care, Deets said. “It means my mother, my father and my grandparents will be covered and I will not be saddled with that (expense),” he said.

“Right now, we’re all running the risk that, if any member of the family--whether it’s a parent over 65 or a breadwinner or one of the children--needs long-term care outside the hospital, it will impoverish the family. I’m not denying it costs money but people are willing to pay,” he said.

But some in Congress expressed concern that the senior citizens’ share of federal spending has grown from 16% in 1965 to about 28% now.

“To say you want better bridges doesn’t mean you’re against the old people,” a key congressional aide said. “We’re not saying their claims aren’t valid. We are saying they have to stand in line and compete with everyone else.”