Will Medicare cuts fund health care reform?

By Renee Cumm
A plan geared for health reform could be cutting Medicare spending by $500 billion causing many local senior citizens to be without care. Local hospitals and nursing homes will also be affected in their inability to afford to take on, an estimated, 30 million more people insured by Medicaid, according to the Washington Post.
The $848 billion health care reform bill was unveiled by Senator Majority Leader Harry Reid last week and it would be funded by cuts through Medicare provider payments and taxes placed on expensive health plans.
The article stated that the cuts could cost hospitals and nursing homes so much money that they will be unable to afford to take Medicaid recipients and stop accepting Medicare entirely.
“I live on my social security,” Ruth Zierinski said.
Zierinski is a resident at the Victoria House. The house is somewhat different than a nursing home, because many of its residence self-pay.
Zierinski, retired after working for 28. She said she was forced to go on social security and decided against living with any family members.
“I worked until I couldn’t work anymore,” she said.
Zierinski depends heavily on her social security and does not want to ask family for help. Her only resources come from her Medicare, Medicaid and her SSI check.
“You don’t want your children to have you as a burden,” she said. “The day I get kicked out of here, I will be very destitute”.
Zierinski said it is unfair that money is being cut through Medicare and that benefits could be lost because of it.
“They should have never been able to touch it,” she said. “You don’t go after the old people, the young who are struggling or the middle class. You start at the top, in the big corporations, where the big money is,” she said.
Zierinski may not be kicked out of her home, but the Victoria house does not profit by accepting citizens that do not self-pay, the proprietor of the house, Patty Fuller said. She said that the plan to decrease Medicare spending does not directly affect residence within the home. However, it is not very affordable for her to accept payment from residents, who rely on only their SSI check.
“Nobody can run a house on what they pay now for SSI, it’s less than half of what a self-paid resident would pay,” Fuller said.
A Cable News Network or CNN site that deals with global fortune and money issues stated that the Social Security’s Cost of living increase will not be in effect for 2010. The cost of living quota usually goes up every year for SSI beneficiaries.
The affect on beneficiaries from the loss of COLA is minor with a difference of only about $12 to $15 in benefits Fuller said.
“The cost of living is not going up and they have raised room and board rates in adult homes,” Brian Ruede, the administrator at Evergreen Valley Nursing Home, said.

Ruede said that the decrease in Medicare funding would mainly affect nursing homes and not adult homes like the Victoria House. He said the affects would be primarily in the expenses. The decrease in Medicare earnings will make it hard to balance the home’s expenses, and a lesser revenue coming in from Medicare and Medicaid. When a home has developed a currency system, any change in the system could cause problems.
“It doesn’t really affect the residence, but nursing homes depend on the government to keep us operating, even if we annually increased our room and board rates, it would be very hard to off-set any loss,” Ruede said.
He said that Medicare accounts for 90 percent of the number of billable days at Evergreen Valley. It is a bulk of the revenue. He said that many nursing homes, including Evergreen Valley, hold a very small percent of private residents who self-pay.
“If we are getting less reimbursements’ from Medicare, then we will have to cut corners,” a financial councilor at Champlain Valley Physicians Hospital said.
Medicare accounts for only 68 percent of what private insurers pay for equal services, according to American Hospital Association in a recent study entitled, “Trends Affecting Hospitals and Health Care Systems”.
“There's no doubt that our health care needs some reform the trouble is, which way should we take to the reform. Liberals in congress want to centralize decision making in Washington, letting politicians and bureaucrats decide what’s right for you,” Nina Owcharenko, deputy director of health care policy studies, said.
Owcharenko, spoke out on a U-Tube broadcast entitled, “Health care; At What Cost”, on behalf of a project created by, The Heritage Foundation. The project, Fix Health Care Policy, is focused on the Health Care Reform agenda under the slogan, “A dose of reality, fact checking the white house”.
The reform bill has proposed unfinanced mandates by the state, based on a recent study provided by, the FHCP project. The study showed that states would be mandated to pay an addition $25 billion in Medicaid expenditures. The bill could become so unaffordable to employers, by being forced to pay $28 billion in taxes, if they do not provide health plans approved by the government.
Section 9001 of the bill stated: “Excise tax on high cost employer-sponsored health coverage”.
The tax will cause employees to lose their employer coverage and they could be forced to receive care from the government. Five million Americans would lose their employee based coverage and 24 million people will be without coverage, according to the study.
“A better approach would allow individuals and families to decide what health care is best for them, some in congress want to create a one size fits all health care system for all Americans, a better approach would allow the states to design health care systems that best meet the needs of their citizens”, Owcharenko said.