************* this is what bush on Fl wants for the older people who have to be put in nursing homes.get sick.lose your bed...compassion republican bastards.........People of Fl.get off the couch and write to bush and tell him and his fellow sucking off the poor and giving the rich tax cuts ...their is no way this should be allowed to happen!!!
:puke:
A Bush Medicaid cut could leave nursing home patients who have to be hospitalized.
Currently, residents can be hospitalized up to eight days and Medicaid will pay the nursing home to keep their beds open. After their hospital treatment, residents return to their corkboards and wall prints.
Medicaid calls this the "eight-day bed-hold." Bush proposes saving $23-million this year by eliminating it. In dollar terms, the bed-hold proposal pales beside a total of $300-million Bush hopes to cut from this year's nursing home budget. Florida spends more than $2-billion each year on nursing home care through Medicaid.
snip
Bush's budget reflects his determination to tame Medicaid costs anywhere he can. A federal-state health program designed for the poor, Medicaid covers children without insurance, disabled people and frail elders. But its price has doubled in six years, driven mostly by drug and nursing home costs. Medicaid now consumes one-quarter of Florida's budget, the largest single expense.
"It's a problem we have to deal with," Bush said last week. "We can't just sit back and allow the budget to grow by 12 or 15 per cent."
snip
Besides the eight-day bed-hold, Bush hopes to cut $260-million from the nursing home budget by suspending payments for staffing increases mandated by the 2002 Legislature.
snip
That's because Medicaid reimburses nursing homes based on the previous year's costs. To comply with that 2002 law, the industry already will have spent the $200-million by the time the new budget goes into effect. Reneging on reimbursement may put Bush on a collision course with some lawmakers, who undoubtedly will be pressured by local nursing home operators to maintain that funding.
snip
The Bush budget cuts would cost the average nursing home more than $400,000. Administrators said they will have to cut food service, activities, housekeeping and maintenance.
To qualify for bed-hold money, a nursing home must have filled at least 80 percent of its beds in the previous quarter. That means the bed-hold cut would fall hardest on residents of the most popular homes. Bon Secours, where Grace Potaski lives, often has a waiting list.
snip
On Day 10, Bon Secours' admissions office called Jo Ann Drysdale, Potaski's daughter.
"The lady said, "I hate this part of my job, but I have to tell you that Medicaid only holds beds for eight days,' " Drysdale recalled.
The nursing home would keep the bed open if Potaski's family would pay the $146-a-day charge. Drysdale and her husband are both disabled.
"I said I couldn't afford that," Drysdale said. "They said they would have to pack up her belongings and put them in storage."
Good fortune intervened. When the hospital released Potaski three days later, her bed had not been filled.
Without Medicaid's bed-hold money, such uncertainties will become common, said Bon Secours social worker Nancy Reinthaler. It would also aggravate another phenomenon:
"We have people who simply refuse to go to the hospital for fear they won't get their bed back."
- Staff writer Joni James contributed to this report.
© Copyright 2003 St. Petersburg Times. All rights reserved
http://www.sptimes.com/2004/03/01/news_pf/State/Patients_may_lose_che.shtml
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