- Disabled Nevadans could lose aides under state cuts, By Ray Hagar, December 5, 2010, Reno Gazette-Journal: “Meg Procaccini was born with cerebral palsy. Unable to move much, the 46-year-old spends her days between her bed and wheelchair in an apartment building for the disabled at William J. Raggio Plaza. Her Medicaid covers the cost of a personal-care aide, who operates a lift that gets her from bed to chair and back to bed again. The aide means everything to the quality of life she tries to maintain. Coverage of the personal-care aides for more than 6,540 disabled Nevadans is listed among the state Department of Health and Human Services proposed cuts, Director Mike Willden said. ‘If they take the aides out completely, I won’t be able to get out of bed,’ Procaccini said. ‘I will just be in my building alone. If they do these budget cuts and take the aides away from us, I won’t be able to live my life.’ As part of Gov.-elect Brian Sandoval’s $1.2 billion in proposed budget cuts, Health and Human Services will need to trim $200 million from its current budget or $500 million from its requested budget for the 2012-13 cycle. The aides are a big-ticket item, with $53 million requested to cover their costs in the next biennium…”
- State struggles to help disabled residents create independent life, By Laura Frank and Jennifer Lafleur, December 5, 2010, The Coloradoan: “Nearly one out of every four residents in Larimer County nursing homes wants out, an analysis of state and federal records shows. Colorado – which was the birthplace of the independent living movement three decades ago – now is struggling to help disabled residents receive care at home instead of at a facility. And that’s costing the state money. ‘Long-term care in general is costing the state more and more each year, just as more people need long-term care services and the costs of care continues to increase,’ said Tim Cortez, hired by the state in June to reform long-term care with the goals of serving more people and saving money. In 1999, the U.S. Supreme Court said people who can live independently have that right. Keeping them in nursing homes is a form of segregation, the court has said, and that violates their civil rights. But Colorado doesn’t have the resources or the infrastructure to assist all those seeking a change of living situation. And while the overall nursing home population is shrinking, the number of working-age Coloradans in nursing homes is actually growing…”
Day: December 7, 2010
State Budget Shortfalls
Mounting debts by states stoke fears of crisis, By Michael Cooper and Mary Williams Walsh, December 4, 2010, New York Times: “The State of Illinois is still paying off billions in bills that it got from schools and social service providers last year. Arizona recently stopped paying for certain organ transplants for people in its Medicaid program. States are releasing prisoners early, more to cut expenses than to reward good behavior. And in Newark, the city laid off 13 percent of its police officers last week. While next year could be even worse, there are bigger, longer-term risks, financial analysts say. Their fear is that even when the economy recovers, the shortfalls will not disappear, because many state and local governments have so much debt – several trillion dollars’ worth, with much of it off the books and largely hidden from view – that it could overwhelm them in the next few years…”
State Budgets and Medicaid – Arizona, Texas
- Arizona Medicaid cuts seen as a sign of the times, By Kevin Sack, December 4, 2010, New York Times: “With enrollments exploding, revenues shrinking and the low-hanging fruit plucked long ago, virtually every state has had to make painful cuts to its Medicaid program during the economic downturn. What distinguishes the reductions recently imposed in Arizona, where coverage was eliminated on Oct. 1 for certain transplants of the heart, liver, lung, pancreas and bone marrow, is the decision to stop paying for treatments urgently needed to ward off death. The cuts in transplant coverage, which could deny organs to 100 adults currently on the transplant list, are testament to both the severity of fiscal pressures on the states and the particular bloodlessness of budget-cutting in Arizona…”
- Study: Millions could lose health coverage if Texas opts out of Medicaid, By Robert T. Garrett, December 3, 2010, Dallas Morning News: “Up to 2.6 million Texans could lose health coverage if the state opts out of Medicaid, but rising costs make the program very hard to maintain, a new state study warns. Texas faces ‘a no-win dilemma’ because withdrawing from Medicaid would mean a loss of about $15 billion in federal funds a year, representing about one-tenth of the state’s health care sector, said the report released by two state agencies Friday. And that would allow other states to siphon off that money, some of it from Texas taxpayers…”
- Redefine federal-state relationship with Medicaid, report says, By Tim Eaton, December 3, 2010, Austin American-Statesman: “If Texas were to opt out of Medicaid, as Gov. Rick Perry and other politicians have suggested, medical providers would lose about $15 billion in federal money, and the state would be hard-pressed to provide health care for poor people, according to a new report Friday. As the report circulated, Perry backtracked on his earlier suggestions, and he and other officials talked about hopes of reinventing the federal-state health care program for 3.2 million mostly poor, young and disabled Texans…”