03.08.11
GOP budget will hurt the least among us
Peggy Fikac has this report on what may happen to nursing homes in Texas if the GOP has it’s way on budget cuts, Nursing homes at risk, Official says closings will come if state cuts funds.
Under proposed cuts to meet a massive budget shortfall, some nursing homes in Texas would inevitably be forced to shutter — and the head of the agency that oversees them said Monday that he could offer no thoughts on where residents would turn for care.
“I am unaware of any business model that runs on a relatively small margin that could accept a 37 percent reduction in one year and continue to operate,” Commissioner Chris Traylor of the Texas Department of Aging and Disability Services told the House Appropriations Committee, referring to proposed cuts in Medicaid reimbursement rates.
His assessment was part of a uniformly bleak picture, as lawmakers wrestled with the health-and-human-services section of a draft budget that envisions neither more tax revenue nor use of the state’s rainy day fund.
[…]
One estimate by a nursing-home group projects that 80 percent of the state’s 1,000-plus nursing homes would close if Medicaid funds fell by 30 percent.
Under questioning from Rep. Sylvester Turner, D-Houston, the committee’s vice chairman, Traylor, said it’s “inevitable” that some nursing homes would close under proposed rate cuts.
“I cannot give you an answer on where these individuals may receive their care,” Traylor said.
Because of the “level of reductions in community programs,” he continued, “it’s unlikely that the community provider base will be there to pick up the slack for those individuals” who need skilled nursing care.
Turner said there also would be reductions in independent home-living services under the bare-bones budget proposal before the committee.
“I go back to the question, where are these people going to go? We are voting to put these elderly and disabled people on the street,” Turner said. “We’re cutting every other place that they could turn.”
The rest of the article talks about Perry/GOP shenanigans on figuring out how they are going to to PR on using the RDF. Essentially Perry wants them to wait for as long as they can before they actually say they are going to use it. Because as Sen. Ogden said, we know they are going to use it.
That nursing homes, and state-supported living centers for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, are part of the discussion of things to cut from our budget is despicable. Certainly all Texans, especially the wealthy in this state whose tax burden is so low, could pay a little more in taxes to insure that these people get the care they need. If we only had some leaders that could make that happen.