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Between 1999 and 2005 over 1800 nursing homes closed in the United States. The primary reason is that the average annual cost per patient is $69,000. Medicare and Medicaid aren’t covering all of this cost and it either must come from other sources, or eventually when the shortfall becomes economically intolerable for families and owners of nursing homes, well the nursing homes will close. Where will the elderly patients go for their needed care? Is our government making plans for this certain occurrence?
With Obama’s health care plan making it all too obvious that the elderly are too much of a cost burden, thus their justification for cutting Medicare by $500 billion dollars over the next 10 years, we can be assured that the burden will break the financial backs of families across our nation. What we aren’t hearing is any plan to allow Medicaid and Medicare reimbursements for in-home care. This would help to alleviate the certain future shortage of nursing homes, while allowing those who prefer to remain in their homes with required in-home nursing care to receive financial assistance via Medicaid/Medicare. I have an elderly friend and his wife who elected to keep her at home, yet in doing so they forfeit all financial assistance that would otherwise be paid by Medicaid/Medicare if the wife was in a nursing home. Our brilliant law-makers seem to have overlooked this issue in their wonderful work of reinventing America’s health care system. Other issues, such as sufficient quantities of certified nurses, must be addressed regardless of whether they work in nursing homes are in support of in-home patient care. Information about Giles County can be found at: