Residents in Long Term Care are in for some difficult times if there is a drastic change in the way our Medicaid system is funded and managed. The following is an ‘alert’ from National Consumer Voice for Quality Long-Term Care. This is not posted as a partisan message. I see the reality of the situation in my visits in the King County Ombudsman program. Funding in our state’s advocacy programs has been cut by 50% since 2010. More funding, not less, is badly needed to protect our most vulnerable citizens.
December 20, 2016
Congressional Actions Will Hurt Consumers
Tell Congress NO!
What’s Needed Now
Congressional Leaders have promised, as a first order of business in January, to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA). This could harm nursing home residents and other long-term care consumers, their families, the workers who care for them and many others. Tell your Senators and Representative NO!
- Repealing the ACA without a comparable replacement plan that would go into effect immediately would leave millions without healthcare coverage and raise costs for millions more.
- Nursing home residents could lose important protections that are part of the ACA. These include:
- A system for collecting more accurate data about staffing in nursing homes
- Dementia and abuse prevention training
- Support for state programs for national criminal background checks
- Mandatory reporting of suspected crimes against residents to law enforcement
- Programs that improve access to home care services could be eliminated – forcing people into nursing homes, costing taxpayers more money, and breaking up families. Losing these programs could also stop nursing home residents from transitioning back into the community.
We’ll Need You Again Soon!
Of grave concern are threats by Congress to convert Medicaid to a block grant, and to privatize Medicare – and they will try to do that in the early part of 2017.
That means states would have wide discretion over who receives services, how they are delivered, and what standards are adhered to. It would also cut the amount of money that is available for services.
Block grants are fixed yearly amounts that come with “no strings attached.”
- States are given flexibility to design their own programs, without national standards, like the Nursing Home Reform Act, which guarantees “each” resident rights to quality of life and care.
- States would decide who is eligible for coverage and who is not. Currently more than 70% of nursing home residents and 15% of assisted living residents depend on Medicaid to help pay for their care.
- The fixed yearly allotments provided under a block grant would not increase – even if costs continued to rise, or there were an economic downturn that increases need.
We’ll need your help over the next several months to tell Congress not to cut Medicaid or Medicare. People’s lives depend on these critical programs! |
