It's only half a million dollars!

Everything in life is relative. It simply depends on your perspective. One man's "junk" is another man's "treasure". You say "potayto", I say "potahto". Some people are willing to pay $837 for a first-class airline ticket, I'd prefer to fly coach for $288.

Maybe that explains why the CEOs of our Country's 3 largest auto-makers thought nothing of spending $20,000 to fly their 36 million dollar luxury jets to Washington D.C. to ask Congress for financial aid to help bail out their financial "hardships".

Since this is budget time at Seniorsfirst and we have been spending a great deal of time preparing and evaluating our 2009 budgets, I thought I would focus my comments this week on what a half million dollars means to our nursing home operation at Kirkhaven.

Half a million dollars is six times the cost of our planned merit and cost-of-living increase to staff. That would compute to an 18% raise for all our staff.

Half a million dollars would just about pay our monthly mortgage costs......................... for the entire year.

Half a million dollars is equal to the average annual salary of 20 certified nursing assistants. That would allow us to practically double our unit staffing on days.

Half a million dollars would pay our prescription drug costs.......................... for the next 3 years.

Half a million dollars would pay for our grocery, meat and dairy costs for the year and still have enough left over to cover our entire recreation budget for the year.

Half a million dollars would pay for our utility costs............................. for this year and next.

While it may be relative, half a million dollars is a lot of money and it is also the estimated amount of the impact of the Governor's proposed Medicaid cuts to Kirkhaven over the next two years.

An immediate 8% across-the-board reduction in our Medicaid rate followed by another 2% reduction as of April 1, 2009. Additionally, he proposes to eliminate both the 2008 and 2009 trend factor adjustment that is routinely added onto the previous year's rate to reimburse us for inflationary cost increases. To top it all off, he would also delay, reduce or eliminate several other components of our rate to generate State savings while cutting the reimbursement for caring for the needs of our most frail elders.

Maybe it's just my perspective on things, but I don't think we should give for-profit corporations "bailouts" to continue their greed-based profits, while imposing "dump-outs" on non-profit nursing homes that threaten their mission-based services.

Yes, the State has a critical financial crisis and all sectors must participate in the solution. But, if we want a Medicaid budget similar in costs to other states, lets compare what we are providing and how we can balance service levels, risk tolerance and cost. We need to first reduce regulations, mandated services, paperwork, fiscal and other reporting requirements before we can simply expect to cut funding.

If you agree, call your State Senator and Assembly Representative and let them know you oppose cuts to nursing homes without first considering concessions. Remind them that:

* Medicaid long-term care has already withstood reductions (twice in 2008) in excess of 1.7 billion in the past three years.
* Medicaid already only pays on average 70-75% percent of the average nursing home cost per day.
* A rapidly increasing elderly population requires a stable and growing long-term care infrastructure.
* Non-profit nursing homes already operate on modest 1-2 % operating margins at best.
* The State's savings on every Medicaid dollar cut is only 50 cents, due to the loss of federal matching funds and thus represents a rather inefficient "efficiency".
* We need to preserve and support our non-profit, mission-based nursing homes.

Kirkhaven's State representatives are Senator Joseph Robach (585-225-3650) and Assembly Woman Susan John (585-244-5255)....................and remember, it's "only" half a million dollars!