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Long-Term Care Consumers Family Members Advocates

Group Sign On Letter to Super Committee

ADVOCATES: The Consumer Voice urges you to sign on to the letter below.

Dear Members of the Super Committee:

The National Consumer Voice for Quality Long-Term Care and the undersigned organizations urge you to reduce the federal deficit in a fair and balanced way that does not take away essential services from those who depend upon them - often for their most basic needs in life. These services - the majority of which are funded by Medicaid and the Older Americans Act - include long-term services and supports for individuals both at home and in nursing homes, ombudsman program services that advocate for quality care for nursing home residents, federal and state regulation and oversight of nursing homes, and more.

Cutting Medicaid will have a devastating effect on older adults and persons with disabilities. Currently Medicaid is the single largest source of long-term care coverage in the nation. Nearly three million seniors and people with disabilities receive Medicaid services that allow them to stay in their own home or community. At the same time 70% of nursing home residents rely on Medicaid to pay for facility care which costs $75,000 a year, or substantially more. Reducing Medicaid funding will make it harder for the elderly and people with disabilities to qualify for the nursing home benefits or home and community-based services they need.

In the words of one daughter:

"I'm the legal guardian of my parents, on Medicaid, in a nursing home. They are totally incapacitated. All of their income, except for $35/month, goes to their care. But this doesn't come close to the amount required. Thank God for Medicaid. What would our poorest do without it? Are we headed back to the days of Dickens?"

Reducing both Medicaid and Older Americans Act funding will negatively impact not only access to long-term services and supports, but also the quality of care. From decades of experience, we know that funding cuts will put nursing home residents at increased risk.

Decreased provider payments will result in long-term facilities cutting staff and wages for workers, further compromising quality of care. Reduced Medicaid funds will also mean fewer inspections and less oversight of nursing homes, and if Medicaid were changed into a block grant to states, the standards that almost all nursing homes are expected to meet, including resident protections and rights, could be eliminated in return for “flexibility.”

Nursing home quality would be diminished by reductions in support for the Older Americans Act, which funds the long-term care ombudsman program. Ombudsmen represent vulnerable people who are denied their rights or receiving poor care. The following example illustrates how important the ombudsman program is to residents:

"One of our staff ombudsmen visited a nursing home and felt that something was not right. So we put a volunteer ombudsman in the home. One of the residents pulled her aside and said she couldn’t stand to hear ‘them’ hitting ‘John’ (another resident) anymore. ‘John’ acknowledged that one of his caregivers was hitting him on the head, and the other was threatening him. When ‘John’ agreed to let us intervene, our investigators found that two caregivers were verbally abusing and hitting him. They asked the administrator to remove the caregivers immediately. When our ombudsman visited later, the workers had been removed, and ‘John’ was clean, well-dressed and looked like a new man."

Without ombudsman presence and intervention, the physical and verbal abuse of “John” would most likely have continued. The Long-Term Care Ombudsman Program is a critical resource in every state. However, federal cuts to this already underfunded program would gut its services to nursing home residents for whom it is a lifeline and sometimes the only voice they have.

The older adults and people with disabilities we have described in this letter need the support of the government for quality care on a daily basis. Please don’t ask them to carry an unfair share of the deficit burden, while requiring nothing from wealthy Americans and corporations.

Sincerely,

This petition is no longer active.

109 total signers.

Consumer Voice ClearinghouseYour one-stop destination for long-term care information

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