Rendell's budget has health issues
The plan would freeze Medicaid funding to nursing homes, which say they were promised an increase.
HARRISBURG - A one-year freeze on state Medicaid subsidies that Gov. Rendell has proposed for the coming year's budget would have a devastating effect on patients, nursing home operators said yesterday.
For two years, nursing homes agreed to accept lower payments to help the state cope with budget crises, but the operators said they believed future state reimbursements would fully cover the cost of caring for low-income Medicaid patients, said Anne Wantz, chief operating officer of the Pennsylvania Health Care Association.
"Not only does the governor's proposed 2008-09 budget not fulfill this promise, it goes in the opposite direction," Wantz said yesterday during a news conference at the Capitol. "Because of the increasing costs of caring for ever sicker [Medicaid] residents, the zero percent increase . . . is a cut in funding."
The state would maintain its current average daily reimbursement rate of $180 per resident under the state budget Rendell presented to lawmakers this month. Wantz's organization and other nursing home groups are beginning a statewide campaign to push for more funding.
Over the last three fiscal years, the state's Medicaid program paid nearly $290 million less than it owed for nursing home care, Wantz said. About 80,000 of Pennsylvania's 1.9 million Medicaid recipients live in nursing homes.
But the administration contends it never promised any funding increase, and it was unrealistic for nursing homes to expect one.
Officials are anticipating a more difficult budget year for 2008-09, and they have decided to maintain current levels of Medicaid reimbursements for all health-care providers, with a few exceptions, said Michael Hall, deputy secretary of long-term living for the Department of Public Welfare.
"We're trying to figure out how to build a budget in an environment where it appears the economy is dropping into a recession," Hall said.
Nursing home administrators said that while they sympathized with Rendell's plight, their budgets were being squeezed by the rising costs of wages, medical supplies and prescription drugs, among other items.
"This safety net is in danger of disappearing within a few years if a concerted effort is not made by the commonwealth to adequately fund our facilities," said Joanne Wible, an administrator at a nursing home in Carlisle.