Assisted Living Company Begins Purge of Patients on Medicaid

[InsuranceJosh]

The following article, "Assisted Living Company Begins Purge of Patients on Medicaid" ran in the June 2007 of Elderlaw News , the monthly online newsletter published by ElderLawAnswers. www.elderlawanswers.com
The article painfully reinforces the harsh reality of relying on Medicaid. It's helpful for clients and prospects whose attorneys have told them it's easy to find a home that takes patients under Medicaid's Home & Community Based Services Waiver. As we have said many times, this is clearly not the case.
In April 2007, Assisted Living Concepts, Inc. , which operates assisted living facilities in 17 states, began evicting Medicaid recipients living in its facilities and refusing entry to applicants who are on Medicaid. So far, the company has evicted about 40 residents from facilities in Nebraska and Texas .
Over the next five years, company officials say they plan on having their 1,800 remaining Medicaid recipients move out, either voluntarily as they choose to move into other assisted living facilities or nursing homes, or involuntarily through evictions. This would leave the company with facilities occupied only by more lucrative private-pay residents. On average, Medicaid pays $24,812 a year, which is 31 percent less than the $36,200-a-year average that assisted living facilities cost.
Recognizing that assisted living facilities are less expensive than nursing homes, some states now offer Medicaid long- term care coverage to assisted living residents. Assisted Living Concepts' actions have stirred debate about whether the state governments or the assisted living industry are responsible for the fate of residents suddenly threatened with eviction simply because Medicaid is paying their bills.
In an interview with ElderLawAnswers, Assisted Living Concepts' chief executive officer Laurie Bebo said the company filed for bankruptcy twice in the 1990s and is now moving toward serving only private-pay residents in part because it does not want to undergo a third bankruptcy.
"They [Assisted Living Concepts' former management] just didn't learn from the past that you can't make ends meet [on Medicaid]," said Bebo. "Now we are making the right decisions for the company."

 

[James]

Good for them! It is never a bad time to stand up and tell the Government and those that think they have a "Right" for others to subsidize their living requirements that it has to end.

 

[Winter_123]

Good for them! It is never a bad time to stand up and tell the Government and those that think they have a "Right" for others to subsidize their living requirements that it has to end.

Quite so. Many, many states have a dual pay scale where there is one fee for medicaid clients and another for private pay. Each legislative session some activist legislator proposes a bill to eliminate this alleged inequity. Problem is they find out that the private pay rates are needed to subsidize the medicaid residents because that reimbursement does not even cover the costs. Eliminate that and you have to raise the rest through taxation. There arent many facilities that are opposed to medicaid recipients because it is a welfare program. Their objection is that it just does not pay enough. You raise the reimbursement rate to the same as private pay and the little piggies will line right up at the trough for medicaid clients. It would be better for both the government and the folks if the government would provide more tax incentives for people to purchase long term care insurance but that is way too strategic and long range for the government.

Winter

 

[James]

Funny, so you think everyone that attempts to make a living should be describe as "Little Piggies"? Of course you don't describe those that think everyone here is here to provide them care from birth to death as a god given right for them breathing air, no you call them Medicare Clients?