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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.
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