House
GOP Just Voted to Slash Medicaid — Which Pays
for 60 Percent of People in Nursing Homes
By Jon
Schwarz
May 04,
2017 "Information
Clearing House"
- The American Health Care Act, which
squeaked through the House of Representatives on
Thursday, is terrible for many Americans in many
ways. But what’s gotten almost no attention is
the horrendous effect it could have on Americans
in nursing homes.
Daniel
Webster, a Republican representative from the
11th Congressional District in central Florida,
acknowledged this when he announced he would
vote for the AHCA.
“I have been very concerned about Florida’s
Medicaid-funded nursing home beds,”
Webster said.
“These are critical to the access some of our
senior population has to our nursing homes.”
Webster
explained he was only willing to vote yes
because President Donald Trump, Vice President
Mike Pence and the House of Representatives’ GOP
leadership promised that they would find some
way to deal with the potential disaster created
by the bill. It will now go to the Senate, and
if some version of it is passed there, will then
have to be reconciled with the House bill for a
final vote.
Many
middle-class Americans are unaware that the huge
cost of nursing home care – which in some areas
can run over $100,000 a year — is not covered by
Medicare. Those who need it and cannot pay for
it themselves can generally receive coverage
from Medicaid, though they usually must spend
down all their savings first.
When
all is said and done, Medicaid pays the bills
for over 60 percent of nursing home residents —
people who cannot care for themselves and
without Medicaid would have literally nowhere to
go.
But the
AHCA slashes $880 billion dollars from Medicaid
spending over the next ten years, or about
one-sixth of the $5 trillion it would otherwise
cost the federal government. (While these seem
like enormous numbers, the U.S. economy is so
big that even $5 trillion will be just about two
percent of the gross domestic product over the
next decade.)
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The
bill accomplishes these cuts in part by changing
Medicaid from an entitlement, in which the
federal government automatically provides states
with funding based on the needs of their
population, to either a block grant or a per
capita allocation (at the state’s choice).
The
amount states will receive per capita will be
set at the average cost for recipients in 2016.
It then will increase at the Consumer Price
Index’s rate of medical inflation until 2020,
when it will begin going up at the CPI medical
rate plus one percent. While this sounds
reasonable, it will inevitably have serious
consequences over the next 20 years due to the
aging of the baby boom generation.
This
year someone born in 1950 will turn 67 years
old, and probably doesn’t need nursing home
care. In 2037 they will turn 87, and will be far
more likely to do so.
Nursing
care is one big reason Medicaid recipients over
85 cost the program 2.5 times more than those
who are between the ages of 65 and 74. If
Medicaid were to remain an entitlement, states
would automatically receive increased federal
funds to cover these greater costs as baby
boomers age. Under the AHCA, the per-capita
payments to states will increase far too slowly
to cover them.
Precisely how much of a catastrophe the AHCA
could be is impossible to say as of now, since
Republicans passed the bill without first having
it scored by the Congressional Budget Office.
But there’s little question it will be
disastrous if anything like it becomes law. This
didn’t matter to Republicans in the House. The
question now is whether it will matter at all to
Republicans in the Senate.
This article was first published by
The Intercept
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The
views expressed in this article are solely those
of the author and do not necessarily reflect the
opinions of Information Clearing House.
