April 24, 2008
Four out of ten State Representatives have signed onto a budget amendment that would restore $18 million cut from the home care budget for fiscal year 2010. The amendment, filed by House Elder Affairs Chairwoman Alice Wolf of Cambridge, would prevent 4,400 elders a month from losing their home care services as of July 1st. As of noon on April 23rd. 64 State Representatives have signed onto the amendment, which home care advocates have made their top priority for next week’s budget debate. According to Linda George, Executive Director of Boston Senior Home Care, a total of 600 elders will lose their home care if funding is not restored.
“If this amendment fails, we will be cutting thousands of seniors off home care,” said Al Norman, Executive Director of Mass Home Care. “This will be the largest cut in services since home care was created in 1973. Norman said that average monthly caseloads will fall from 32,124 to 27,750 if $17.9 million is not restored. The lost funds were part of the House Ways and Means budget, which will be debated in the week of April 27th.
Norman said that the state is receiving more than $1.4 billion in new federal Medicaid funding for 2010--- yet home care will be closed to new applicants. Nursing homes are slated to receive $45 million in rate hikes, while home care agencies will lose 17% of their funding. “In a state that calls itself a ‘community first’ state, none of this makes sense,” Norman stated. “Seniors overwhelmingly want to be cared for at home, yet the budget continues to favor institutions, while rationing home care.”
“We need to listen to what our families are telling us,” Norman added, “and give them care where they want it ---at home. We fought a civil rights battle for years in this state to protect the consumer’s right to be cared for in the ‘least restrictive setting’ possible---but this budget does not reflect that intent.”
Norman said that 565 seniors were waiting to get into home care as of March 31, 2009, and more than 200 additional consumers waiting to get into enhanced home care programs. The cutbacks this year were caused by so-called ‘9c’ reductions in funding last October. “This has already been a tough year for seniors struggling to live at home,” Norman said, “but next year will push us down to historic lows.” According to Mass Home Care, the caseload drop will lower the program to levels not seen since 1980, when an average of 30,000 elders were receiving home care each month.
Norman said that agencies working with seniors understand the revenue crunch, and therefore are supportive of efforts to raise revenues, or tap into the Stabilization fund. “We have told lawmakers we will applaud their efforts to generate revenues,” Norman concluded. “The income tax cuts of the 1990s have left us in this deplorable situation. The Chairman of House Ways & Means has called these cuts ‘distasteful,’ and he is right. It is painful to raise revenues—but it is even more painful to tell a family that their mother cannot get the help she needs to remain living at home. That’s a choice none of us should have to make.”