It’s Good to be a Nursing Home Owner
Tuesday, April 28th, 2009 By Marc Kilmer
While other industries that suck from the teat of Ohio government are experiencing hard times obtaining funding, nursing homes are having their usual success in getting more of your tax money shoveled their way. Already profiting handsomely from Ohio’s Medicaid system, if House Speaker Budish has his way nursing homes will be profiting even more from their political connections. The nursing home situation in Ohio is a good example of why government-run health care won’t be the cost-effective, patient-friendly nirvana that some liberals envision.
Health care analysts generally agree that it is less expensive for taxpayers and better for many Medicaid recipients if long-term care is provided mainly in homes or community settings (the cost of home or community care is one-third of the cost of nursing home care in Ohio). However, as you may imagine, nursing home operators have a different view. It doesn’t matter to them if their services are expensive or if people don’t want to use them. If there were a free market in long-term care, business owners could not disregard consumers in this way and thrive. But when politicians are running the show, it’s pretty easy to convince them to spend your tax money for expensive care that people don’t want.
In Ohio, nursing home operators are especially good at it. There are only eleven states in the nation that rely more heavily on nursing homes for long-term care. The nursing home lobby is strong in the Buckeye State and they reward their alllies well. Now one of their allies, House Speaker Budish, wants to exacerbate the situation and pass a budget that will enable even more tax dollars to flow to nursing homes.
This is a long-term problem (pardon the pun) for the state. We’ve noted it here before. Governor Strickland, to his credit, has tried to deal with it but found both the Republicans and Democrats in the General Assembly to be more interested in padding the profits of nursing home operators rather than saving money for taxpayers or providing quality care for seniors. It looks like even this unprecedented state budget deficit doesn’t stop the politics-as-usual in Columbus.
Tags: budget, Medicaid, nursing homes
