Leave it to Chris (he of the newly minted URL) to bring some facts to the “What your tax bucks are buying” discussion:
(Sorry for the hotlink, Chris — let me know if it’s a problem.)
Do check out the whole post.
Health care’s kind of expensive, huh? So much more reason to control costs. But I’m pretty sure a lot of that money is nursing home care. Rep. Mike Festa (D-Melrose) had a proposal to allow Medicaid to reimburse for home care rather than nursing home care:
About 48 percent of the $3.6 billion [i.e. $1.73 billion] Massachusetts spends on long-term care for Medicaid recipients pays for care in nursing homes, compared with 43 percent for home or community care, according to federal statistics.
I’m not sure where that went in the new law. According to the advocates, it would have saved millions. Anyone know?
UPDATE: I put in a call to Festa’s office: The nursing care bill was not part of the health care bill; it’s been passed by the Senate, and is making its way through the Elder Affairs Committee, chaired by Rep. Correia. So we should hear more about that soon.
FURTHER UPDATE: JohnB in the comments says: “It is important to note that we receive 50% reimbursement from the federal government for most of the state’s health care spending through the Medicaid program. Therefore the net cost to the state is actually half of what the graph indicates.”
EVEN YET STILL FURTHER UPDATE: See this comment: It’s not simply half.
Bill Weld wanted to have a one year Mass. residency requirement on nursing home care, to prevent NH residents from moving to Mass. for nursing home care when they needed one, as NH doesn’t pay for it.
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Naturally, the Legislature voted him down.
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That was sixteen years ago – wonder what the pie chart looked like then as opposed to now?
according my state rep, the old “transfer all your assets to your kids and then qualify for free nursing home care” maneuver is in high fashion as well.
The same people who are against “welfare cases sucking the state dry” will step right up and say that the state should pay their parents’ nursing home costs so that they can get that inheritance.
The hotlink is fine; if I hear from the back end of LCL, I’ll let you know! Thanks for the link.
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I’ll be curious to see how the new health plan affects the slice.
It is important to note that we recieve 50% reimbursement from the federal government for most of the state’s health care spending through the Medicaid program. Therefore the net cost to the state is actually half of what the graph indicates.
I overlooked that at first go.
Yes. About half of Massachusetts Medicaid spending is paid by the federal government. The text of the MBPC fact sheet from which the chart was taken explains that this means that the net state cost of health care is less than the total share of the budget as shown in the chart. But not all healthcare spending is Medicaid and Medicaid is not the only state program that receives funding from federal and other sources. So you can’t just cut the Health spending number in half. It is however true that if you were to net out federal and other non general fund financing from both Medicaid and all other budgeted spending then healthcare would show up as a smaller share than it does when you just look at total spending from all sources. The fact sheet from which the chart was taken (which has some other information that may interest people) is available at: http://www.massbudget.org/Facts_at_a_Glance_Taxes_in_MA.pdf