Home Healthcare Services NAICS 621610

Jun 3, 2025 - Budget Cuts Proposed for National Institutes of Health

• The Trump Administration’s proposed fiscal 2026 budget reduces funding for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) by $18 billion to $27.5 billion. The budget proposal may result in lower funding for patient care across the health care continuum. Under the proposed 2026 budget, $6 billion would be allocated in total discretionary and reimbursable funds for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Program Management, which includes $3.5 billion in discretionary budget authority and another $2.5 billion for reimbursable administration. A total of $722 million would be allocated for continued “core Medicare operations, and it also modernizes inefficient, decades-old processes.” The Children's Health Insurance Program and Medicaid administrative operations would receive $130 million and the National Medicare Education Program would also receive $284 million in the proposed budget. The NIH received $46.4 billion in program level funding in 2024 and just over $46 billion in 2025, according to the budget proposal.
• Medicare home health payments will increase 0.5% in 2025 under final rules issued by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). The increase is slight but CMS had proposed a 1.7% cut in June. The home health prospective payment system final rule reflects the continued implementation of the Patient-Driven Groupings Model. This formula bases reimbursements on patient characteristics rather than therapy hours and sets payments based on 30-day episodes instead of 60 days.

• Home health workforce shortages and rising wages are key reasons for rapidly-increasing home healthcare costs, according to Marc Cohen, co-director for the Leading Age Long Term Services and Supports Center at the University of Massachusetts-Boston. Costs for home healthcare for the elderly and bed-ridden have increased 14.2% during the 12-month period ending in March 2024, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). That's the largest percent increase in home healthcare costs during a 12-month period since the BLS began collecting data on such costs in 2005. The median cost for a home health aide in 2023 was $33 an hour and that for a homemaker aide was $30 an hour, according to insurance company Genworth. The direct care sector is expected to add over 1 million new jobs by 2031, according to health care data analytics firm KFF, but those additional jobs will not be enough to meet the country’s rising eldercare needs.
• Home healthcare industry employment and average wages for nonsupervisory employees increased slightly during the first four months of 2025, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). Home healthcare services increased prices slightly during 2024, according to the BLS. Industry sales are forecast to increase at a 6.44% compounded annual rate from 2024 to 2028, faster than the growth of the overall economy, according to Inforum and the Interindustry Economic Research Fund, Inc.