Depending how two bills are voted on in Congress this fall, there could be up to $2.7 billion cut in Medicare funding over the next five years in the United States. According to floridatoday.com, Florida’s nursing home residents would be hardest hit.
The 3% cost-of-living (COL) increase for senior care in the House bill would be replaced by an expansion in child health care through CHIP or the Children’s Health Insurance Program. CHIP is a federally funded program providing health care coverage to children 19-and-under without health insurance. They must be U.S. citizens and their families must qualify according to income level. CHIP aids families who earn too much money to qualify for Medicaid. Before its summer adjournment, Congress passed the Children’s Health & Medicare Protection Act or CHAMP, in an effort to expand CHIP.
“It would be gone,” Bruce Yarwood, CEO of the American Health Care Association (AHCA), said August 17 of the COL increase to seniors. For the average Medicare patient in a nursing home, Yarwood said that would be $10-$12 less a day for care than the typical reimbursement of roughly $350, which "quickly adds up to thousands of dollars." The CEO said the pinch will be felt when the baby-boomer bubble moves beyond retirement and nears the day when dependent care is a necessity. The trickle-down effect in reduced funding would compromise nursing home staffing, new technology and refurbishment of aging facilities, said floridatoday.com
The pending House bill would cut Medicare Part A benefits by $2.7 billion over five years. Beneficiaries and providers in the states of Florida, New York, California, Texas and Ohio would suffer 33.1% of the national hit.($895 million). Florida’s Medicare reduction of $205 million would be the greatest of any state. During Congress’s recess, Florida long-term-care advocates will rebuke the legislation. They urge state lawmakers to petition the House to cancel the proposed senior citizen, health care cuts, according to Insurancenewsnet.com.
One reprieve is the Senate, where a bill would strip no monies from Medicare to assist CHIP. Instead, the Senate would fund expanded health care for children primarily through federal tobacco taxes.
Yarwood spoke from Washington, D.C. with William Phelan, executive director of the Florida Health Care Association; and FHCA past president Kelley Rice-Schild, whose family has run the Floridean Nursing & Rehabilitation Center in Miami for 63 years. "Our hope is legislators at the national level will rethink this," Phelan said, "so that long-term-care won't be disproportionately affected."
Congress is expected to negotiate a final bill when it reconvenes in September.
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