Community-Based Services are Cost Effective. Information Bulletin # 281 (3/09)
Two recent studies/reports document the many ways Medicaid’s Community-Based Long Term Care Services are cost-effective as compared to expensive institutional nursing facilities:
- “Do Non-Institutional Long-Term Care Services Reduce Medicaid Spending?” written by H.S Kaye, M. LaPlante, and C. Harrington. It is in the journal Health Affairs, vol 28, no 1 (Jan/Feb 2009). http://content.healthaffairs.org/index.dtl
- “Taking the Long View: Investing in Medicaid Home and Community-Based Services Is Cost-Effective” written by R. Mollica, E. Kasser, L. Walker, and A. Houser. It is in the publication entitled INSIGHT on the Issues, vol I26 (March 2009), a publication of the AARP Public Policy Institute. www.aarp.org/ppi
Do your legislatures really want to save Medicaid funds?
As your legislatures discuss/threaten reducing Medicaid expenditures and as they do not discuss “rebalancing” institutional versus community-based expenditures but want to keep people unnecessarily institutionalized, these two reports from nationally recognized and extremely well-respected organizations support your arguments.
Are your newspapers and editorial boards aware of the overwhelming data that exists? Are legislators and their staff aware? Probably not. Meet with them and share these reports with them.
Do you Congressional representatives and U.S. Senators, who still do not support the Community Choice Act, know that the CCA will be cost effective? Again, probably not.
Advocates – use the above two reports!
Steve Gold, The Disability Odyssey continues
Back issues of other Information Bulletins are available online at http://www.stevegoldada.com/ with a searchable Archive at this site divided into different subjects.
To contact Steve Gold directly, write to stevegoldada@cs.com or call 215-627-7100.
