September 2nd, 2009

The Patriot-News today published on op-ed by Ron Barth, president & CEO of PANPHA (an association of nonprofit senior services), who calls for stability in funding and regulations for senior care services.

Writes Barth:

“In light of Pennsylvania’s mammoth problems with increasing health care costs, expensive regulations and a growing senior population, it’s time for an honest dialogue that will finally establish a system of senior services that is accessible to and affordable for all citizens.

The current government solution (if you want to call it that) is this: Providers are told by the state that they are going to have to sharpen their pencils and devise a way to pay the cost of current requirements as well as fit expensive and onerous regulations into their budgets while, at the same time, payments for services for low-income seniors will be reduced.

It’s easy for the governor and the Legislature to say the state doesn’t have any money so they’re going to pay less, but they never indicate what services they would like reduced or which seniors they no longer want served.

Nursing facility providers already have suffered with funding that is nearly $300 million less than their costs during the last three years.

While we don’t have the same figure for home and community-based care providers, their plight is just as dire.

Providers have run out of pencils to sharpen. In the end, providers can only shave so much from their budgets when government doesn’t live up to its funding responsibilities. As they say, someone has to pay.

The buck is being passed to residents and families who pay for their own services, and also to health care-giving professionals who are, at best, seeing their compensation being cut and, at worst, losing their jobs.

This process should enrage all Pennsylvania families who have watched their parents or grandparents save their entire lives only to see those savings drained to help pay for regulations that add cost but not quality.”

Read the rest of Barth’s piece.