Medicaid Cuts Could Be A Recipe For Disaster
A lead article in this newspaper recently addressed the impact of reductions in Medicaid on health care coverage.
This article did not address another major component of care funded by Medicaid - long-term care. Congress is proposing a 33 percent reduction over seven years in Medicaid funding. Medicaid is largely a program for the elderly and disabled. Almost half of the Medicaid expenditures go to nursing homes and in-home, long-term care services. My concern about this is not only the magnitude of this funding reduction, but also the human impact on persons and families who rely on the program for longterm care.
I believe the true victims of proposed Medicaid reductions will be older Americans and their families who are forced to make painful sacrifices to pay for long-term care, working parents who are forced to quit their jobs to care for children with serious disabilities, and young, disabled adults who are denied the help they need to regain their independence.
Two out of three people who receive Medicaid long-term care are elderly - in many cases, our parents and grandparents. One out of three are younger adults and children with illnesses, injuries or lifelong disabilities such as cerebral palsy or mental retardation. Medicaid also protects spouses from becoming impoverished by the drain of health-care expenses.
People will not stop getting sick because Medicaid stops paying the bills. People with Alzheimer’s disease are not suddenly going to be able to care for themselves because there is drastically less long-term funding. When a disease like Alzheimer’s strikes, bringing bills of $30,000 a year or more, it does not take long for personal savings to vanish. Medicaid helps young adults struggling to overcome a spinal cord injury get back into the workplace and become taxpayers again.
In Washington state, 733,000 residents who rely on Medicaid could begin to lose those benefits in 1996. By the year 2002, a conservative estimate is that 85,700 people will be dropped from the Medicaid rolls. These are the startling findings of a new study just released by the Long Term Care campaign, a coalition of over 140 organizations nationwide.
Because the Medicaid program touches the lives of millions of Americans, it seems prudent that before Congress considers reductions in spending of the magnitude proposed for Medicaid, it should:
1. Spread budget reductions equitably across all parts of the federal budget so that no one part is disproportionately reduced.
2. Ensure that fraud, waste and abuse in all programs are eliminated before reducing programs that benefit the most vulnerable citizens.
3. Fund the safety net programs, such as Medicaid at adequate levels to efficiently and effectively provide such services.
There is just no way to achieve the massive Medicaid funding reductions Congress is considering without slashing benefits to very vulnerable people. Congress needs to look beyond a broad budget document, where the focus is on mind-numbing billions of dollars. On the way to achieving a balanced budget, our politicians need to consider how their vote speaks volumes about what we value as a society.
Medicaid recipients are often our family and neighbors.
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