Holding a banner that declared “Stop the Freeze,” four employees from the Resource Center for Independent Living in Topeka picketed the Social and Rehabilitation Services office Wednesday in Emporia to protest a client freeze announced on Dec. 1 by SRS Secretary Don Jordan.
According to earlier reports, SRS simultaneously imposed a freeze in access to services and began a waiting list for the Home and Community Based Services Waiver program, through Medicaid, for individuals with physical disabilities.
During the current fiscal year, the rate of growth in the waiver has increased significantly, far outpacing the appropriated funding levels. The action was not taken to cut the budget, SRS said, but to avoid further overspending. The numbers of people receiving in-home services had increased significantly during the past fiscal year.
Companies that provide in-home services contend that the freeze not only takes away choices for handicapped individuals; it also will cost the state more money than funding HCBS.
The Topeka workers on Wednesday were taking shifts to allow RCIL employees from Emporia and Osage City to get a break from the frigid weather.
The client freeze affects low-income disabled people aged 16 to 64 years old who need in-home assistance to avoid being placed in nursing homes, according to information from the Stop the Freeze group.
RCIL provides services to handicapped people through personal-care attendants that allow them to stay with some degree of independence in their own homes.
“SRS put a hard freeze on the physically handicapped,” said Summer Ludwig of Topeka. “No new consumers have the choice of receiving in-home services as opposed to nursing-home care.”
The freeze will be in effect until at least July 2009.
Ludwig said providers have been told that the SRS goal is to reduce the current number of in-home assistance recipients from about 7,500 to 5,500.
“That’s the number it was at in 2005,” Ludwig said of the 5,500.
Other physically handicapped people will not be able to receive in-home care.
“They will just either go without services, or have nursing home care,” she said.
Ludwig said that the freeze may reduce costs in the program itself, but will increase costs for the state because of the subsequent effects it will cause.
Ludwig explained that nursing home care is considered an entitlement for Kansas citizens who need the care but cannot afford it. In-home assistance is optional.
In-home care, however, costs two-thirds less than nursing home care, Ludwig said.
“For half the cost (Fiscal Year 08) in Kansas, we served 20 percent more consumers,” she said. “We’re caring for them in the home for much less money.”
The extended expenses for the state, in addition to the nursing home care, could come in jobs lost among the service providers and, for SRS, an increase in expenses for another of its divisions.
“They’re probably going to access state funds and cash assistance,” Ludwig said. “So that’s another cost to the state.”
Members of the RCIL team accused SRS of tracking the number of physically disabled people who die while they are on the waiting list for in-home services.
For the Stop the Freeze supporters, the freeze breaks a 25-year precedent that gave individuals — whether born handicapped or who become handicapped through accidents or other events — the right to choose whether they will live in nursing homes or will receive Home and Community Based Services.
“It is also contrary to any kind of health care reform if health care reform is thought of in terms of lessening the need for expensive institutional care,” a Stop the Freeze news release stated.
“It certainly doesn’t make sense to the individual who doesn’t have a choice,” Ludwig said.
More information about the organization may be had at www.stopthefreeze.com or by e-mailing info@stopthefreeze.com.
admireed (anonymous) says...
Now it starts. Is this more or less important than K-12 education funding? Pick one
January 15, 2009 at 10:48 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
raypettyks (anonymous) says...
Admireed has posed a question which fails to understand the institutional bias wherein people are able to be "served" in nursing homes, but significantly less costly home and community-based services are not available. This is precisely the wrong direction for public policy: HCBS services should be made available for both economic and humane reasons, with nursing homes being the last resort. People want to live their lives as independently as possible and doing so in their own homes with support is far better for their physical health as well as mental health. This OUGHT to be a no-brainer.
January 16, 2009 at 9:42 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )