Medicaid Cuts and the Elderly (Editorial)

In their attempt to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, Senate Republicans are proposing deep cuts to Medicaid, the health insurance program for the poor.

Medicaid, however, also pays for the majority of the people in nursing homes in this country, 62 percent of them in 2015, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. Medicare covers only 14 percent nationwide; the others are covered by private and other sources. In Arkansas, Medicaid pays for 66 percent of those in nursing homes.

“Medicaid plays a huge role in providing for elderly Americans who have, in effect, outlived their savings,” said an article on the news website Quartz, which detailed some of the effects the reductions would have on long-term care in the United States.

A recent story in the Minneapolis Star Tribune examined the toll the bill might take in Minnesota and quoted the leader of a group that provides care to the elderly: States, she said, would “really be forced to make a ‘Sophie’s Choice.’ Do you not provide services to people? Do you cut the services they get? Do you cut rates to providers? None of those are good solutions.”

If services are cut, can Arkansans — some of them already dealing with the care of grandchildren whose parents have been lost to drug abuse — cope with the added responsibility of tending to their aged parents?

If rates to providers are cut, will nursing homes still be able to provide an appropriate level of care to the elderly? Or will newspapers be reporting on increasing cases of abuse and neglect, when even one is too many?

Arkansas voters and the state’s congressional delegation need to consider the impact these cuts will have on long-term care in this state, home to so many elderly people. Surely, after a lifetime of work, they’re owed some consideration.