Louisiana Nursing Home Crisis

[KY_EnviroGuy]

11. Here's some good links I posted a few days ago...

New Orleans Times Picayune:
Louisiana will put 37,000 Medicaid recipients on notice that they could lose benefits
Link: http://www.nola.com/politics/index.ssf/2018/05/people_who_are_elderly_disable.html

Even if state lawmakers find the money to pay for those services before then, state officials said they were compelled to warn Medicaid recipients that the cuts are a distinct possibility.

"We can't just afford to bury our heads in the sand," said Jay Dardenne, Gov. John Bel Edwards' chief budget officer and the state's commissioner of administration. "We tried to delay this as long as we possibly can."

Those receiving notification include around 20,000 people who live in nursing homes, thousands of people with intellectual disabilities who live in group homes and those who receive home health care assistance. All of their support services would be at risk, including the ability to stay in a nursing home, if state Medicaid funding is slashed.

The Louisiana House approved a state operating budget last month that would eliminate four Medicaid programs for the disabled and elderly. Notices are scheduled to go out to those affected Thursday (May 9), though their delivery has been pushed back previously. Dardenne said the 37,000 people will also be contacted to see if they qualify for some other kind of Medicaid service that isn't proposed for elimination.

And, Baton Rouge - The Advocate:
At 'difficult' hearing, public begs Louisiana lawmakers for health care help; nursing home patients warned
Link: http://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/news/politics/legislature/article_05b22a94-5234-11e8-b3f0-3311766dc2fd.html

"When people get the letters, they are going to be frantic," Sen. Regina Barrow, D-Baton Rouge, said during a budget hearing at which the Edwards administration outlined steps that it is taking to prepare people for the worst-case budget scenario and stressed that the letters are not meant as a definite signal that elderly and disabled people are going to be evicted this summer.

About 35,000 letters will be mailed Thursday to people who rely on Medicaid health care programs deemed "optional" under federal guidelines. The letters include 17,000 to nursing home residents across the state whose assistance would end July 1 if the Legislature doesn't cover funding for those programs in a budget that is currently being crafted.

"These people cannot be taken care of at home and many of them are at an age where there is no home to return to," said Mark Berger, executive director of the Louisiana Nursing Home Association, often a politically powerful group in the State Capitol.

Beyond patients with mental and physical limitations being threatened with the possibility of having to move out, Berger said the news also could trigger layoffs at nursing homes.

"This budget cut looms large over the entire program," he said.

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