Healthcare reform and the Older Americans Act
Barack Obama threw the entire country under the bus with his health care “reform”. People I know immediately made decisions affecting their very lives based on assumptions Obama said would occur, fully knowing they never would. How many people made the argument that it would require everyone to have insurance? Go ahead, raise your hands. Still believe that too dontcha?
Try this on for size.
Over the last several years, Robert Wood Johnson, among others, has been pushing Consumer Directed Options for elderly indigent people. The primary benefit of this program is designed to allow the elderly person the ability to:
- Select, manage, and dismiss their workers
- Choose which services to use
- Choose what providers or workers to hire
- Decide what time of day workers will come
- Decide whether to hire family members
- Decide whether to spend available funds on things other than services (like appliances or home modifications)
Sounds wonderful huh?
According to the Ohio Developmental Disabilities Council, the primary justification in most states to do it is “it’s the right thing to do“. I kid you not. Most of the administering agencies are loving it. It’s a cash cow for the financial administrator. The main reason it’s a cash cow?
- They don’t have to provide health insurance for the worker.
- Not only that, they don’t have to provide workers compensation for the worker either.
- Not only that, they don’t have to provide liability insurance on the worker either.
- Not only that, they don’t even have to train the worker on how to do the job safely.
In other words, they send an untrained person with questionable backgrounds into an elderly person’s home with no health coverage at all. None.
Anyone see a plan here if you want to assure some revenue for the rest of your life? ( Think bad back. Think no legal entity to challenge you. )
In every state they’ve done this plan to any real degree, they are now looking for ways to cut the entire state budget because they’re going broke. California’s a freaking nightmare.
So, ya gotta ask, if they don’t have to provide health insurance, workers compensation, liability, or even training, how does it get sooooo expensive?
Simple. They do allow the SEIU to collect fees not only from member providers, but from providers who don’t participate. In Illinois you won’t have health insurance, you won’t have workers compensation, you won’t have liability insurance, but you will have to pay union dues.
Obama is so thrilled with this concept he has altered the Older Americans Act to require this arrangement in all fifty states whether the state wants to do it or not. He’s doing that through the local waivers, the programs designed to allow states to manage the programs as they wish. And, he’s doing it as a policy change to keep not only Congress from bothering him, but pretty much all media clueless.
So, what is going on right now, and I mean right now, is people who are providing this service are receiving health insurance to some degree, workers compensation, liability coverage, and training on how to not injure themselves working with elderly people. Under Obama’s and Kathleen Sebelius’s direction, they will lose their health insurance and workers compensation. That’s not conjecture. That’s not speculation. That’s not rhetoric. That’s not a straw man. That’s not TEA bagging. That is happening right now. Call any Administration on Aging office in your local area and ask for Consumer Directed Options. If you don’t believe me, I dare ya. I double-dog dare ya.
If you work in non-medical elderly services, prepare to get screwed like you’ve never been screwed before. This isn’t an advocacy campaign, it’s already been done.
And you know what? It doesn’t stop there. By diluting program funds from existing programs to fund this effort to avoid providing the health insurance Obama guaranteed everyone, it’s making existing grant programs so small they can’t support themselves. These grants are used to compel providers to provide services in small rural areas that otherwise would have no providers at all. So, what IS happening is existing providers are dropping out all over the country. Where do you suppose those workers are now getting their health insurance? And for the locals, my agency is very close to that point now. We are discussing at this point whether it’s worth it or not to even try. I mean, what’s the point from a company perspective. We are required, by law, to make sure our employees are protected. It’s our #1 expense, bar none. We are now put in a position where we will have to not only compete, but give away at least 10% of our revenue source, to entities that do not have to provide any benefits whatsoever to their “employee”. And, they’re not.
All of that because of the empirical evidence of “it’s the right thing to do”.
