It’s a known fact that this Great Recession as it’s now being called helped no one. Employment is still at an all time low, foreclosures seem to appear all over the place, and somewhere someone is complaining about aliens. And because money has to be saved some way or another, states are turning towards services they find useless, but the disabled find absolutely important. How can cutting money-saving services lead to more money for a state, when it’s only going to be more expensive in the end?
For Afton England, who lives in a trailer home here, the news came in a letter last week: Oregon, facing a $577 million deficit, was cutting home aides to more than 4,500 low-income residents, including her. Ms. England, 65, has diabetes, spinal stenosis, degenerative disc disease, arthritis and other health problems that prevent her from walking or standing for more than a few minutes at a time.
Through a state program, she has received 45 hours of assistance a month to help her bathe, prepare meals, clean her house and shop. The program had helped make Oregon a model for helping older and disabled people remain in their homes…
… Nursing homes here cost the state an average of $5,900 a month; home and community-based services cost $1,500 a month.
Other states have made similar cuts.
If an aid provides home service for 30 hours week at an average of $9, it comes out to around $1400 a month. This is assuming that the aid (caregiver) gets paid the $9, because in Texas it’s $7.25. Now, if the elderly and disabled are forced to move into a nursing home the expense obviously goes up, sometimes to more than $15 per patient because we’re kidding ourselves if we’re looking at these patients as people. No independent living, then we’re better off dead.
It just doesn’t make sense.
via 19th Floor