SPRINGFIELD — Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn wants to cut $11 million in Medicaid spending on home health care and, according to a new study, the move could lead to higher costs in nursing homes and hospitals.
By Anthony Brino
SPRINGFIELD — Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn wants to cut $11 million in Medicaid spending on home health care and, according to a new study, the move could lead to higher costs in nursing homes and hospitals.
The Chicago-based Health and Medicine Policy Research Group, a health-care policy nonprofit, found that other states that cut funding for home-based services, such as Hospice, saw costs rise for hospitalization and nursing homes.
The group scoured national studies and data on spending for Medicaid home services and spending on nursing homes and hospitalization for elderly patients. In Michigan, the group found, after home-care waivers were cut, spending on nursing homes and emergency hospitalization increased.
“Home care stretches dollars,” said Lisa Hardcastle, president of the Illinois HomeCare and Hospice Council, an association of home-care providers, which commissioned the study. “It is a service that can help more people for less money.”
The study comes amid the governor’s efforts to find $2.7 billion to plug shortfalls for Medicaid, a federal-state health care program for low-income residents, and a larger battle among lawmakers and interest groups over next year’s budget.
It also highlights a looming challenge for the state health-care system — health care for the elderly. Within a decade the number of retired Illinoisans, now about 2.3 million, is expected to grow to 3 million, according to the study.
Cutting home care services
Short term solutions lead to long term increased costs and a less healthy aging population. It is important to find ways to keep people in their homes at a third of the cost with which we will soon be saddled if people are forced into hospitals and nursing homes.
Illinois cannot have a graduated income tax but could increase it and exempt those below certain income levels rather than driving more people into poverty and institutionalization.
Cutting home care services
Cutting costs for home care services for the elderly will show short term increase fiscally, but will hurt in long term. This was the case with deregulation in year 2000 of the finance industry; short term gains amounted to long term losses, thus the stimulus money from tax payers provided to the banks. Similar cause and affect will take place, particularly when over 60 population is to increase at a brisk pace.