April 15, 2011
Medicaid, Medicare, whatever…
Russ Vaughn
“In yesterday’s campaign speech, Barack Obama demonstrated that he really doesn’t understand long term care or nursing home care as it is known to most of us.
Obama made the claim that under the Ryan/Republican debt reduction plan that seniors would have to go on Medicaid to go into a nursing home with their bills being paid by the government. Well for Mr. Obama’s edification, that is exactly the situation right now, under his administration. Like far too many of those ignorant of the issue of long term care, Barry seems to think there is a Medicare benefit for residential status in nursing homes.
The fact is, Mr. Chief Executive of the Federal Government, no such benefit exists.
The Medicare benefit for nursing home stays is limited to what is called skilled nursing stays which normally occur following a minimum three-day hospitalization of a Medicare recipient when that individual is discharged directly from a hospital to a skilled-nursing facility for recuperative care.
Under this program, Medicare will pick up the full tab for only 20 days. A longer stay requires re-hospitalization or certain other qualifiers but under no circumstances is this an open-ended program. In most cases, after day 20 the patient begins to assume the costs up to $128.00 per day from day 21 through day 100….
