U.S. Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell has delayed a vote to repeal the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. The proposed bill in the Senate would result in deep cuts to Medicaid, and in Alabama especially, that could mean trouble for older adults. A recent report says Alabama is one of seven states where rural seniors rely more on Medicaid for their health care than they do in most other places.
According to the report from Georgetown University’s Rural Health Policy Project, 20 percent of seniors in rural Alabama rely on Medicaid, compared to the national average of 15 percent. “Medicaid is playing a really important role in providing long-term care when somebody has to go into a nursing home,” Joan Alker, one of the study authors, says. “Rural areas already have problems accessing health care. [With] doctor shortages, rural hospitals have really been struggling.”
She says the cuts to Medicaid in the Senate bill could force rural hospitals and nursing homes to shut down and “leave states holding the bag. So Alabama, which I know already has struggled from their Medicaid program as is, would face really tough choices: either the state would have to raise taxes or you’d really have to cut back on Medicaid services. There could be literally people just cut off.”
According to the American Health Care Association, the current bill could cost the average Alabama nursing home about $200,000 a year in revenue, which could shut them down and leave people without care.
Alabama Nursing Home Association spokesman John Matson says about 67 percent of nursing home residents in the state have their care covered by Medicaid.
“The people we care for in our nursing homes might have been your former schoolteacher,” he says. “Many of these individuals worked hard for a long time, maybe even retired as middle class or upper middle class. But because they lived a long time, they spent their retirement savings, and now they have great medical needs that are simply more than they can afford.”
So seniors in Alabama, as well as family who might have to leave work to care for them, could have a lot at stake if the current Senate proposal passes.
For a previous report on Medicaid’s role in rural children’s health care, click here.