Long Term Care Providers Criticize Administration Budget, USA

The American Health Care Association (AHCA) and the Alliance for Quality Nursing Home Care (the Alliance) expressed great concern with the Administration's budget proposal for Fiscal Year 2008. If implemented, it would have serious and lasting repercussions on the nursing home care relied upon daily by 1.5 million frail, elderly and disabled citizens. The Administration's budget calls for more than $10 billion in cuts to Medicare funding for skilled nursing facility (SNF) care over five years. While payments to skilled nursing facilities account for only 4.8% of the proposed Medicare budget, nursing homes would absorb more than 15% of the proposed cuts.


"This Administration has partnered with the long term care profession to bring about quality improvement initiatives and has praised the strides nursing homes have made in providing quality care, yet now they are proposing drastic cuts that would endanger quality care," said Bruce Yarwood, president and CEO of AHCA. "Now is precisely the time we as a nation must be investing in and strengthening America's long term care infrastructure - not weakening it by cutting critical Medicare and Medicaid funding, which are essential for the quality long term care and services relied upon by America's frail, elderly and disabled."


"The President's Medicare proposals for skilled nursing facilities would be devastating to the financial stability so crucial for quality improvement," stated Alan Rosenbloom, president of the Alliance. "During the past five years, Medicare payments have been stable, which has allowed nursing homes to improve quality to meet the needs of both an aging population and the more medically complex and acute patient. Serious disruption in this financial stability would also undermine the significant progress the Administration has made in making Medicare's 'post-acute' benefit - rehabilitation, nursing home care and home health care - more rational for beneficiaries and providers. These proposals are shortsighted and largely ignore the new realities of the Medicare post-acute marketplace, to the detriment of Medicare beneficiaries and the health care workers on whom they rely for quality services."


Nearly 80 percent of nursing home patients are covered by Medicare or Medicaid, and the two programs account for as much as 75 percent of nursing home revenues. Medicaid already underpays for patients by nearly $13 per patient per day. As a result, Medicare funding has helped assure the availability of appropriate resources for Medicaid patients.


The American Health Care Association and the National Center For Assisted Living are the nation's leading long term care organizations. AHCA/NCAL and their membership are committed to performance excellence and Quality First, a covenant for healthy, affordable and ethical long term care. AHCA/NCAL represent nearly 11,000 non-profit and proprietary facilities dedicated to continuous improvement in the delivery of professional and compassionate care provided daily by millions of caring employees to more than 1.5 million of our nation's frail, elderly and disabled citizens who live in nursing facilities, assisted living residences, subacute centers and homes for persons with mental retardation and developmental disabilities.


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