At 08:52 PM 3/16/2003 -0600, you wrote:At 09:44 PM 3/16/03 -0500, Kevin Tarr wrote:
Now a majority of the nursing home are state run. Which means they have less wealthy residents. I'd believe that he's raising this fee because he assume Medicaid will pay the fee, it comes from the feds, not the patients.
In other states, though, the claim is that the problem is that the Feds have been making cuts in what Medicaid and Medicare will pay, throwing the burden back on either the patients (who if, as you say, are "less wealthy", don't have it to pay) or the states.
So where is the money _really_ going to come from?
Time To Stock Up On K-Y Jelly And Nupercainal Maru
-- Ronn! :)
Well..........seriously I think it will only catch those who can pay or slipped into medicaid bills when they can get away with it. I doubt they will kick out residents who cannot pay the extra $1825 a year.
Maybe it's better that the burden is passed back to the state. And I'm saying that from a BAD state. PA has the second highest retirement age population after Florida. But why should North Dakota pay higher federal taxes to support nursing home residents in Florida? (I understand the importance of spreading the costs, but I feel there is some point that the spending has to be reasonable).
Let's switch gears for a second. A few years ago I heard a report that said "Even if we build 1,000 bed nursing homes every day for the next ten years, we will not have enough capacity for the baby boomers." Now 1000*365*10 only equals 3.65 million so that is certainly a valid statement, that's less than 1% of the population, not knowing the current bed count. But what can/should be done? If we build now for predicted capacity, what will happen 20 years after the bubble passes? Will we have nursing homes abandoned like strip malls are now? (In fact heck we should convert strip malls to nursing homes).
I don't have any solution. I was just pointing out that in general it seems like everyone is saying "_I_ can't pay it" and looking for someone else to pass the bill to. And, of course, that the taxpayer will get stuck with it in the end . . .
Who, Me Cynical? Maru
-- Ronn! :)
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