Nursing homes, which care for 1.4 million people in the U.S., could be another victim of Trumpcare’s Medicaid cuts. Even though senior citizens have Medicare, it’s Medicaid that pays for long-term care for many—and pays much of the wages of the 1.7 million people who work in nursing homes.
Mark Parkinson, chief executive of the American Health Care Association and National Center for Assisted Living, which represents about 11,000 nursing homes nationwide, said on a conference call Monday that Medicaid cuts under the proposed health-care law would cost individual nursing homes an average of $100,000 a year over the first three years.
That would spell disaster for a typical nursing home, which makes about $150,000 annually, he said.
“Within a year or two, most buildings in the country would be below their break-even points,” Parkinson said. “This is not hyperbole.”
That would be a disaster for elderly people, and for their family members who would have to figure out how to care for aging parents with little assistance.
This is just one more reason we need to keep calling Republican senators to say no to the Senate’s Trumpcare bill. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell may be delaying a vote on the current bill—that’s a huge victory, but we saw how House Republicans failed to pass Trumpcare once and then came back and made it happen. That’s the fight we’re in.
The end of Medicaid as we know it? No exaggeration. The Senate version of Trumpcare has worse long-term cuts to Medicaid than the House version, to pay for tax breaks to the wealthy. Call your Republican senator at (202) 224-3121, and give them a piece of your mind. Tell us how it went.