What Happens to Current Nursing Home Residents if the House Budget Resolution Becomes Law?

[Omaha Steve]

My mom lives in a nursing home thanks to Medicaid. We learned today she has cancer. She turned 88 on the 11th. She went back in the hospital last Friday with pneumonia again. She isn't strong enough for surgery or chemotherapy.

Steve

http://www.medicareadvocacy.org/2011/04/21/what-happens-to-current-nursing-home-residents-if-the-house-budget-resolution-becomes-law/

Under the proposed budget resolution passed by Republicans in the House of Representatives, nearly a million nursing home residents could immediately lose coverage for nursing home care. Further, all of the standards that govern nursing home care today could disappear.

A study of the costs of nursing home care, released April 21, 2011 by John Hancock Financial, reports, "the national average annual cost of care in the U.S. is $85,775 for a private room in a nursing home; $75,555 for a semi-private room in a nursing home."[1]

The House Republican Budget Resolution purports not to change Medicare for new beneficiaries until 2022. But, for current Medicare beneficiaries who live in nursing facilities, the overwhelming majority of whom rely on Medicaid for their nursing home coverage, the impact of the Budget Resolution would be immediate and devastating. With the repeal of Medicaid, fewer residents would be covered by Medicaid and more of the costs of nursing home care would be dramatically shifted to residents and states, and, for the first time, to residents' families. Residents could be required to pay for prescription drug coverage under Medicare Part D, whereas, under current law, those with Medicaid have no cost-sharing. And all current federal standards of care for nursing homes could be lost.

Nursing home residents using Medicaid already pay for a considerable portion of the nursing home charges for their care. They are required to contribute virtually all of their income toward the cost of their nursing home care, usually retaining only a small monthly personal needs allowance.[2] In addition, states can recapture the cost of a Medicaid resident's nursing home care by placing a lien on the resident's property and by collecting from the resident's estate after the resident's death.[3] No other Medicaid beneficiaries are required to repay the Medicaid program in this way for Medicaid benefits they received.

FULL story at link.

[Warpy]

1. I hate Republicans

Let's just put that right out there.

They are the most ignorant, uncaring, unfeeling creatures this country has ever produced in its long history.

If this did pass, states would be scrambling, cutting all benefits to everyone else because throwing frail elderly people who need around the clock care out to die on the street would be too much for anyone to bear.

Many of those old folks don't have families and the ones who do have families whose budgets don't stretch to hiring caregivers while people are at work.

I don't want Republicans out of power. I want every last son of a bitch of both sexes POOR. It's the only thing that might have a chance of waking a few of them up.

[Tsiyu]

2. +10000

I want them out of power AND I want them in rags eating garbage.

They are sociopaths - greedy, greedy sociopaths.

How anyone can see this crap they pull and think they care about anyone but the very wealthy is beyond me.

[Omaha Steve]

3. Don't hold back

How do you really feel???

[Tsiyu]

4. lol

If I told you how I really feel I would get banned!

We've all been sold down the river by Rightwingers, who turn around and blame US!

But they're the idiots who keep electing Greedy monsters to run things. They have no one to blame but their own lunacy in believing the Limpballs and the Blechhs and all those cretins on FUX.

You have to be totally without any sense at all to believe anything in the corporate media today

[Flaxbee]

5. It is truly appalling legislation.

And it's just one more reason I don't think Republicans are civilized. They're just not.