CMS may allow hospitals to pay for housing through Medicaid

I disagree.

Today Medicaid can only funds nursing home stays, the most expensive kind of housing for people who could take care of themselves in a non-institutional setting. Crazy and true.

If Medicaid could pay rent for private apartments for the same people, it would save billions of dollars and give them a better quality of life.

We pay to wherehouse people in this country when we could pay them to live independently. The most expensive solution isn’t always the right one and health care delivery should be tailored to the individual not to a one-size fits all outcome.

Controlling health care costs would benefit everyone.

The unreal stupidity comes from so-called conservatives who mindlessly defend expensive health care instead of exploring ways to make it more affordable and easing the burden on the taxpayers.

Is there a rule that says the government should pay only for hospital and nursing home stays? Why are the most expensive forms of health care sancrosanct with some people but better and cheaper alternatives are off-limits?

We need to look at transitioning health care in the 21st Century both to save money and attain better outcomes. Just because we have done it a certain way in the past doesn’t mean we should do it the same way in the future.

The whole idea of health care is to give people a choice in how manage it like in deciding where its best for them to live. That should be their decision, not made for them by government bureaucrats.

Its hardly socialism to empower the individual and to be frugally conscious about how to spend public health care dollars.

I’m on social security and Medicare, too, but at least we paid in. Of course, the horse is already out of the barn, but a lot of the older Medicaid people have been on welfare most of their lives, except those who paid into ss, but still don’t make enough to live on. And, yes, nursing homes are expensive, but nursing home patients are rarely suitable for living without that level of assistance. Most people are not in nursing homes if they can take care of themselves. I was a home health nurse, and Medicare pays for in home nursing care, and assistance with bathing, but it must be intermittent care, just a few hours a week. And medicaid pays for the same, for people not on ss, or with very !ow income, plus household help. I had patients who worked most of their life, but it was very low paying jobs, and unless they own their home and can afford food, utilities, and their medicine, the $700 a month they get, won’t reach very far. I don’t mind people in that boat getting some assistance, but I am so done with paying for welfare recipients who could have, but never did work a day in their life. But, of course, by the time they’re old and infirm, that horse left the barn a long time ago. Too bad socialist countries aren’t willing to take welfare recipients off our hands, but they only accept immigrants with good jobs or really healthy retirement income, unlike we, who let people in who have little or no ability to provide for themselves. (Fuming now; better quit grousing and clean my house.) There, but for the grace of God...

illegals are a miniscule part of Medicaid. Medicaid recipients can be placed in 4 categories.
1. Moms and their kids. Very few dollars.
2. People with disease thru no fault of their own. Very few dollars.
3. Senior citizens. It cost a lot of money to pay the medicare premiums, and to pay for Nursing Homes and things Medicare doesn’t cover. Seniors have expensive “encounters”.
4. People with injury and disease thru a pattern of bad life style choices. These are the most expensive of all ... among other reasons because the continue to make bad lifestyle choices.

It is group #4 that has grown dramatically both in numbers, and in cost, since 2008. By subsidizing and enabling bad lifestyle choices, we are getting the predictable result.

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