Democrats Slash Medicare Home Care Budget
Sunday, I watched At Issue With Tom Hauser. Hauser’s interview of Neil Johnson got my blood boiling. When you read this partial transcript of the interview, you’ll understand:
Hauser: We’re gonna talk now with someone who has some thoughts on what’s being debated in Washington. He is Neil Johnson, the executive director of the Minnesota Home Care Association.
You know, a lot of people get lost in this debate because so much of it seems so complicated & they don’t understand it & it doesn’t necessarily hit home but what your folks do is take care of people, some of them near the end of their lives, some are very young, in a home health care setting. But in terms of what’s going to happen to Medicare, that generally helps the elderly, of course, they’re talking about devastating the funding for that. How might that impact people who right now are enjoying home care in their homes as opposed to being in hospitals or nursing homes?
JOHNSON: Well there’s no question & the bill’s over 2,000 pages & it’s very complex. We’re very concerned about the home health care aspects of it. We’re looking at, depending on which bill we’re talking about, the House bill cuts home health care by $56 billion over 10 years & the Senate bill, it’s something like $45 billion over 10 years. That’s about a 14.5% cut for home care & we’re about 4.5% of Medicare’s expenditures, so it’s a significant cut.
HAUSER: How many Minnesotans right now have home care?
JOHNSON: Well, we’re looking at…the estimates are 68,000-70,0000 people last year, in 2007 excuse me, & 28,000 received Medicare services & another 30-40,000 received medical assistance services.
HAUSER: And what’s gonna be the practical impact if these cuts were to go through?
JOHNSON: Well, certainly access is an issue & we’re certainly worried about that but the many agencies are hanging on the edge right now. Medicare has been a good payer for most providers in the state of Minnesota & combined with medical assistance & some waiver payments & some private payments & long-term care but Medicare has been a key factor in providing needed skill services to the citizens of Minnesota.
HAUSER: There seems to be a disconnect here because people look at home care as a way to bring down costs that are often associated with hospital stays. I know 60 Minutes just did a segment on this & they said it was a good way for people at the end of their lives of saving spending $5-10,000 a day so why’s that being targeted?
JOHNSON: Well, I think it’s an easy target because people don’t really understand what home care providers do. But, yeah, we think we’re the best alternative out there. It’s efficient. It’s productive & it’s where people want to spend the rest of their lives…
The Democrats have accused Republicans of wanting to cut Medicare, hinting that the Republicans don’t care about senior citizens. Now the truth is out. This NYTimes article is proof that the only political party that’s cutting Medicare are the Democrats:
By a vote of 53 to 41, the Senate on Saturday rejected a Republican effort to block cutbacks in payments to home health agencies that provide nursing care and therapy to homebound Medicare beneficiaries.
Republicans voted against the cuts, saying they would hurt some of the nation’s most vulnerable citizens. Most Democrats supported the cutbacks, saying they would eliminate waste and inefficiency in home care.
The Democrats’ health care bill would reduce projected Medicare spending on home care by $43 billion, or 13 percent, over the next 10 years. The savings would help offset the cost of subsidizing coverage for the uninsured.
There’s the proof. Democrats voted to cut Medicare’s home health care budget by 13 percent over the next 10 years. The next time that I hear a Democrat say that there won’t be a cut in benefits as a result of them cutting Medicare by $467,000,000,000, I’m gonna get in their face and tell them that they’re lying through their teeth. Then I’m gonna read them the riot act. THEN I’m gonna get nasty.
The notion that the Democratic Party is the protector of the elderly, the downtrodden and the people who’ve fallen through the cracks is BS. They’re cutting the most efficient part of Medicare and the part that has the most positive impact on families.
I’ll lay this out as succinctly as I know how. Medicare’s home care programs save money, lots of it. It also helps people live their last days in dignity. And the Democrats just voted to slash their budgets by 14 percent over the next decade.
What’s worse is that the Democrats say the cuts will “eliminate waste and inefficiency in home care.” That’s BS. The cuts are being made because they’re being used to insure the uninsured.
I’d love hearing a Democrat explain how cutting home care budgets, a program that’s already saving billions of dollars, will increase efficiency. I’d love hearing it because I don’t think it’s possible to give a coherent explanation on how these draconian cuts will increase efficiency.
It’s time to tell the Democrats that they’ve gone too far, that they’ve sacrificed the least able to pay for universal coverage. It’s disgusting, possibly more disgusting than cutting the DC scholarships.
The 53 Democrats that voted for these draconian cuts should pay a high political price for abandoning the elderly and those at the end of their lives. What they’ve done is unconscionable.
Technorati Tags: Medicare, Home Care, Budget Cuts, Max Baucus, Harry Reid, Democrats, Senior Citizens, End Of Life, Uninsured
Cross-posted at LetFreedomRingBlog
December 7th, 2009 at 6:41 am
dems have never been the party of the down and out, elderly or anyone else except them selves, the really bad part is the people affected by this have been paying into medicare/ssn for upto 50 years.
December 7th, 2009 at 11:32 am
Donks have never been for the people who had little ability to protect themselves. They are pushers of abortion (not “pro-life - they are actual PUSHERS for abortion), and what class of human life has less ability to defend itself?
They have created special classes of people from swathes of population whose “special class” is based upon choices those people have made and/or are making, and have even foisted on the public the criminalization of criticizing those classes or their actions.
And, far from “protecting” seasoned citizens (remember when the Elephants were so roundly criticized for wanting to cut back the increases to SS and Medicare?), they want to eliminate their coverage now because, you know, they won’t be voting as often as younger folks and so we really need to keep the younger folks on the plantation now, don’t we?
It’s all smoke and mirrors, lying, cheating skuzzball politics.
December 8th, 2009 at 12:25 am
They used to be the party of the people, or at least had a strong populist wing among rural, small town middle class and skilled labor, but today they are a party run by effete academic snobs, patronizing the politically ignorant, primarily black innner-city, and laboring classes whom they keep on the plantation through entitlements and goodies paid for by the entrepereneurial and middle classes.
It has become the party of puke rotten corruption, fraud, social decadence, and moral irrelevance.
December 8th, 2009 at 2:16 pm
Which, by the way, lest anyone think Im being terribly harsh on one party, the GOP has offered nothing but symbolic, or at best pathetically weak opposition to over the last 20 years.
A pox on both their Houses!