06-24-2017, 07:57 AM
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It's 42
Industry Role:
Join Date: Jun 2010
Location: Global
Posts: 18,083
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Old people in nursing homes -- Thanks Trump and Congress
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/24/s...dle-class.html
Quote:
ORANGE, Va. ? Alice Jacobs, 90, once owned a factory and horses. She raised four children and buried two husbands.
But years in an assisted living center drained her savings, and now she relies on Medicaid to pay for her care at Dogwood Village, a nonprofit, county-owned nursing home here.
?You think you?ve got enough money to last all your life, and here I am,? Ms. Jacobs said.
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Under federal law, state Medicaid programs are required to cover nursing home care. But state officials decide how much to pay facilities, and states under budgetary pressure could decrease the amount they are willing to pay or restrict eligibility for coverage.
?The states are going to make it harder to qualify medically for needing nursing home care,? predicted Toby S. Edelman, a senior policy attorney at the Center for Medicare Advocacy. ?They?d have to be more disabled before they qualify for Medicaid assistance.?
States might allow nursing homes to require residents? families to pay for a portion of their care, she added. Officials could also limit the types of services and days of nursing home care they pay for, as Medicare already does.
The 150 residents of Dogwood Village include former teachers, farmers, doctors, lawyers, stay-at-home parents and health aides ? a cross section of this rural county a half-hour northeast of Charlottesville. Many entered old age solidly middle class but turned to Medicaid, which was once thought of as a government program exclusively for the poor, after exhausting their insurance and assets.
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Good luck to the winners ... tick-tock, tick-tock
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