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A Calamity In The Making

by Bill Boyarsky

A major reason for enacting health reform is the fate of elderly and disabled patients—especially the indigent—in nursing homes and assisted-care facilities.

Except for the visits of relatives and thoughtful friends, they’re out of sight, out of mind, all but ignored by politicians and media tuning up for President Barack Obama’s health care summit Feb. 25. But nobody is affected more by the confluence of the health care stalemate and the recession than these patients.

Care for roughly two-thirds of the almost 2 million in these facilities is paid for by Medicaid, the federal and state government aid program for those with low or no income. The stalemated health reform bill would extend Medicaid to cover more people. Another provision would create a federal long-term health insurance for the disabled, with benefits of $50 to $100 a day.

Meanwhile, many states, their revenues reduced by the recession, are cutting Medicaid, ripping into services provided by nursing homes and assisted-care facilities. The New York Times reported that Nevada’s Republican Gov. Jim Gibbons has proposed ending Medicaid coverage for adult day care, eyeglasses, hearing aids and dentures and limiting the number of diapers provided monthly to incontinent adults to 186, down from the present 300.

This is the cruel future that faces our parents, relatives, friends—and us. Such a fate is a powerful argument for President Obama and a recalcitrant Congress to hurry up and act on health reform.

Story complimenst of  Truthdig.com

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