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NAHC's President
Val J. Halamandaris
 Val
J. Halamandaris was named president of NAHC effective July 1, 1982.
During his tenure membership has increased more than 1000%, revenues
have increased from $250,000 to $12.8 million, and staff has increased
from 3 to 85. He came to this position from the staff of the House
of Representatives Select Committee on Aging, where he was senior
counsel and director of oversight. The Honorable Claude Pepper
was chairman of the committee. Prior to joining the House Committee
staff in 1978, Halamandaris was associate counsel to the US Senate
Committee on Aging between 1969 and 1978. From 1962 to 1969 he
worked with US Senator Frank E. Moss, who was instrumental in the
founding of the Senate Aging Committee in 1961.
Halamandaris is a lawyer who has built an impressive 20-year
record working with Congress. He is an acknowledged expert in
health, aging, and long-term care. He received his BA from George
Washington University and his law degree from the Catholic University
School of Law, both in the nation's capital. He is a member of
the DC Bar, the US District Court of Appeals, and one of the
privileged few attorneys who are members of the Bar of the Supreme
Court of the United States.
Halamandaris won nationwide recognition for his role as a congressional
investigator and his efforts to expose fraud against the elderly.
He is best known for the hard-hitting congressional investigations
he directed into insurance fraud, medical quackery, real estate
fraud, nursing home abuse, and other scams victimizing the elderly.
He has produced more hearings on the subject of aging and/or
health care than any staff member before or after him. His work
has been featured on CBS's "60 Minutes" and ABC's "20/20" and
in national magazines such as Time, Newsweek, and US News and
World Report.
His legislative achievements include helping Senator Moss gain
enactment of amendments creating the home care benefit in both
Medicare and Medicaid. He assisted Moss in enacting legislation
requiring federal minimum standards for nursing homes and authorizing
federal funds to help schools of nursing and medicine provide
training in geriatrics. His efforts helped expand Title XX monies
going to the aged and infirm. He helped author legislation creating
the Office of Inspector General in the Department of Health and
Human Services, as well as state Medicaid fraud units.
Under Chair Pepper, Halamandaris worked to preserve and extend
Social Security, establish a program to help stop abuses in the
sale of health insurance in supplementation to Medicare, and
remove impediments restricting use of the Medicare and Medicaid
home care benefit.
In 1977, Halamandaris and Senator Moss coauthored Too Old, Too
Sick, Too Bad, a book on the plight of the elderly in this country.
He has authored 20 major congressional reports including the
series "Nursing Home Care in the United States"; "Alternatives
to Institutionalization"; "Medicare After 15 Years"; "Abuses
in the Sale of Health Insurance to the Elderly"; "Fraud and Abuse
Among Clinical Laboratories"; "Kickbacks Among Medicaid Providers" and "Elder
Abuse: The Hidden Problem." In 1990, he wrote Profiles in Caring:
Advocates for the Elderly.
Halamandaris taught "Aging and the Law" at the University of
Southern California in 1974. He is responsible for the creation
of two highly regarded national magazines, Caring and Caring
People, of which he serves as editor and publisher. In 1987,
he was executive producer of the film "Suffer Not the Little
Children," a documentary narrated by Susan Sullivan, on the plight
of chronically ill children. |
