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Seniors, Aides Protest Planned Cuts to Medicaid
The Blade
July 02, 2009
At least 800 seniors will not be admitted to the program as a result of the two-year funding cut, the Office on Aging estimates.
Those put on the resulting wait list typically choose to enroll in full-time assisted living facilities rather than wait for a spot to open up, Ms. Wilson said, at three times the cost to the taxpayer.
“A person can stay on the wait list,” she said. “However, depending on their circumstances, it becomes extremely difficult to get people out [of the nursing homes.] Even if people are physically able.”
She said that once in a nursing home, individuals are only allowed to keep $1,500 in savings, which more often than not makes reestablishing their independence prohibitively expensive.
As a result of the increased nursing home enrollment, the Office on Aging estimates, a $40 million cut from PASSPORT, would result in increased costs to the state of $102 million.
“Many states are looking at trying to make the home-care option readily available and urging people to look at home care first because it is less costly,” Ms. Wilson said.
Yet the governor’s plan, by making home care a less accessible option than nursing home care, points Ohio in the opposite direction.
Indeed, according to the Ohio Business Roundtable, if Ohio were to shift its Medicaid spending from nursing home care to home care and match the national average, the state would save $900 million per year.
Seventy-five percent of Ohio’s per-capita, long-term care Medicaid spending is on nursing homes and 25 percent is on home care. Nationally, those figures are 61 percent to 39 percent, respectively.
And therein lies the problem.
The solution, Ms. Wilson said, is to make the community aware of the available long-term care services.
“We want the state to make people aware that PASSPORT is available,” she said. “Usually, people just think of nursing homes.”
At three times the cost to the taxpayer of at-home care, nursing homes are not fiscally efficient, Ms. Wilson said.
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