The Good and Bad News About Aging in Place
Howard Gleckman
Government funding for programs to support aging in place was still growing through 2008, but much more slowly than in the past. At the same time, states were making it harder to enroll, limiting benefits, and forcing people to wait longer before they could participate in these programs. And all that was happening before Medicaid home care faced major budget cuts in the face of the Great Recession and the collapse of state tax revenues.
A new study by the Kaiser Family Foundation’s Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured found that while overall spending on home and community-based services grew from $17 billion in 1999 to $45 billion in 2009, the rate of growth slowed sharply after 2004. Annual home and community payments rose by an average of more than 13 percent from 1999 to 2004, but by less than 9 percent since. And in 2008, funding increased by only about 7 percent.
Despite this shift to home healthcare based services, less than half of the program’s dollars were geared to these benefits in 2009, when 57 percent of Medicaid dollars still went to nursing home care.
Kaiser found the same pattern with enrollment in home healthcare programs. In 2008, the most recent year studied, about 3.1 million people received government home care benefits. That was up a bit from 2.9 million in 2007 but, just as with funding, the growth of enrollees has been also slowing dramatically. From 1999 to 2004, the number of home care participants increased from 1.9 million to 2.7 million, or about 7 percent annually. But from 2004 to 2008, annual enrollment grew half as much, or by just 3.75 percent.
Perhaps most troubling, states have been making people wait longer to enroll,even after they become eligible for home healthcare benefits. In 2010, according to Kaiser, more than 400,000 people were waiting to participate in home-based programs in 40 states, and the average wait was almost two years. These wait times vary by disability so children with developmental disabilities can go 3 years before receiving benefits, while the elderly must wait “only” nine months on average.
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If you are looking into home healthcare in Houston, please contact At Your Side Home Care. We provide quality and affordable home healthcare to seniors, veterans and the disabled in our community. Call 832-271-1600.
Our Certified Nurse Aides, 24-Hour Live-in Assistants and Home Health Aides are available 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. We also provide the security and confidence of 24-hour Telephone Assistance, so fast, reliable help is always available when it's needed. To learn more about our homecare services see our homecare services page.
Different people need different levels of homecare. To meet the requirements of our clients, At Your Side Homecare maintains consistent staffing levels of caring professionals. Homecare service is available for as little as a few hours a week, or as many as 24 hours a day, seven days a week
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