Medicaid Cuts Are About to Leave Thousands of Disabled Children Without Care
When the Texas Legislature wants to make budget cuts, vulnerable groups are sadly often the first to be affected. We saw it earlier this year when they banned Planned Parenthood from receiving state funding to provide cancer screenings to low-income women, and now another vulnerable population is about to lose crucial services–disabled children.
That’s because the Texas Health and Humans Services Commission (HHSC) is about to move forward with a plan to slash Medicaid payments for therapy services by $100 million, leaving up to 60,000 children with disabilities without access to critical care.
These are children like 8-year old Brianna Dupuie, who suffered a traumatic brain injury as an infant, and whose support from physical, speech, and occupational therapists has been key to helping her thrive. The state’s proposal would dramatically cut the rate that Medicaid pays to reimburse therapy providers for their services. If these proposed rate reductions move forward, many therapists will to have to drop Medicaid patients entirely, because the amount that Medicaid would pay would be insufficient to cover the cost of therapy. That would mean that thousands of children like Brianna would be left without the support and care they need.
Home healthcare providers would be the hardest hit by the cuts. They have said that “their industry will face an average 20 percent reduction in revenue,” due to the Medicaid cuts. The rate reductions would lead to up to 60,000 disabled children losing access to highly effective home-based therapy services.
Read more: http://www.burntorangereport.com/diary/30969/medicaid-cuts-are-about-to-leave-thousands-of-disabled-children-without-care
= new reply since forum marked as read
