NC House – Deep Budget Cuts in Health and Human Services

Trimming the fat?—or cutting off your nose to spite your face somewhere down the road?

These are short-sited cuts. A better strategy would have been to go after more taxes from the corporations. HEY! YOU COULD START W/ BCBSNC! Naw, won’t happen because Capstrat, headed by Eudy, former NC Dem Party Chairman, now creating adds for BCBSNC in order to block choice of government sponsored health insurance like Medicare, is right in the center of NC Dem Party and gee, we can’t be rude to him, can we?

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There are 158 items associated w/ suggested cuts put forward by the House Appropriations Subcommittee for Health & Human Services, 2009-2011.

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1. Lots of loss of money and positions within NC DHHS. (This will only make my psychologist job harder)

2. LME’s are to have funding cuts and loss of positions (This will only make my job harder and make me steer away even more pointedly from the state funded clients).

3. Non-core LME functions lose money (This means I won’t have to speak to Meridian Behavioral Health Services aka Smoky Mountain Center LME—–they were supposed to privatize, remember?—–regarding trying to steer my Medicaid client into their Recovery Education Center—-group therapy not led by particularly skillful people—-which would have meant I could not bill Medicaid for therapy)

4. Lots of miscellaneous cuts to children and infant services. (This means that kids w/ problems will grow up to be adults with problems and then go to jail where we will pay for them there).

5. No more new local health departments (It appears that what is in place, stays in place; local health departments are used by indigent clients).

6. School health nurses will lose funding (This is another stop-gap measure which keeps people from getting sicker, particularly those w/o health insurance).

7. Item 72: No more Special Olympics, a source of pride in the Waynesville community, in particular.

8. Item 74: The Key Program, which works on housing subsidy has reductions (Does this mean that Tom McDevitt, formerly CEO of SMC LME, will get a salary reduction—-since he’s still running that SMC LME program—-even though he was fired).

9. Item 77: reduces Weatherization Assistance Program (Its not clear to me if this means that indigent clients will get a break re: some of their heating fuel or not. If disabled clients are living in Section 8 housing, they can’t have a wood stove and they can’t have a functioning fire place. Therefore, they are stock w/ expensive heating fuel).

10. Item 92: Big $5 million cut to the DSS Public Assistance programs. (more problems w/ Food Stamps which are already way to little. Bring on more soup kitchens, I reckon.)

11. Eliminates 5 positions within Vocational Rehabilitation Services (as far as I can tell—and after years of working w/ Vocational Rehabilitation Services, they should just get rid of all VR Services. Other than paying me for assessments, I have seen very little benefit from VR Services over the past 10 years in either GA or NC; I cannot even say that they used my assessments in any way that profited the clients).

12. Eliminates funding for Senior Center Outreach Program (I guess my elderly client won’t get her Meals on Wheels anymore; I don’t know what the link of Meals on Wheels is re: this, however).

13. Item 132: Establishes a $50 co pay for non-emergency visits to the emergency room. (Now how are they going to bill Medicaid for this? It won’t happen and they will not be able to squeeze blood from the turnip of indigent clients who would not be going to the ER unless they really needed to).

14. Item 135: Medicaid cards will be printed quarterly and not monthly.

15. Item 136: Big $53 million saved here: Case management services will be consolidated throughout the Medicaid program.

16. Item 138: 4% reduction in Medicaid fees across providers (that means you will have less available mental health services).

17. Item 142: all providers must file Medicaid claims electronically (its the easiest billing I’ve ever done, for sure, via EDS that interfaces w/ NC Medicaid)

18. Item 143: reduces dental services within Medicaid (There are very few dentists that will take Medicaid as it is; therefore, people will just continue to lose their teeth and the dentists that create dentures will make more money).

19. Item 144: reduces funding for Hospice services (I know that Hospice is already cutting out things like physicians, using instead nurse practitioners; I assume that Hospice is fairly dependent on donations and as we know, there are fewer of those these days. ).

20. Item 154: Positions eliminated within Department of Health Service Regulations (this is the agency within NC DHHS that is SUPPOSED to regulate Family Care Homes; I have a one inch plus file of letters from them indicating that they never could find a basis for any of my 10+ paper complaints associated w/ WNC Homes and so hey! we can save paper too; I turned the case over to Congressman Shuler’s office; I bet HE won’t get downsized).

21. Increase of licensing fees (I guess that certainly means I will not be able to rejoin American Psychological Association for its whopping $500+/ year).

One piece of good news: Federal judge ruled that Broughton Hospital should not have had its accreditation revoked in 2007 which means that $8 million goes back into the pot from the Feds re: monies that were kept when Medicaid/ Medicare clients were in Broughton.

When its guns vs. butter, who do you think gets the goodies? On April 9, 2009, the Obama administration requested, in a final emergency supplemental, an additional $ 77.1 billion in war spending. Estimates are that approximately $52.7 billion of that will be for Iraq and the remaining $24.4 billion for Afghanistan

The cuts proposed by DHHS are targeting the young, old and helpless, our most vulnerable citizens. I work in foster care and know first hand that as we eliminate services for children, they will remain in homes that aren’t able to access needed services like child care, medical treatment and therapy which in turn will result in more abuse and neglect. Why is it that we as a society refuse to protect the vulnerable until after abuse, neglect, medical harm or some other crisis occurs. At that point persons have been severly impacted and the original problems are much worse than if we supported them properly to begin with.

i cant believe they would cut services for these children but give out free phone to people who already have them. They can give
at & t money to move here for two hundred jobs. how many jobs will be lost with this cut. they will put people who pay taxes and for their own insurance on food stamps and medicaid. These children will end up in emergency rooms and mental hospitals. How is that saving any money, seems to me that would double the bill. where are these peoples brains. Who do they work for?
Are they taking a big pay cut themselves. I bet they are not.

Vocational Rehabiliation is a good prgram and does help many people with disabilities return to work. I would imagine they will be overwhelmed with people that are losing other needed services and benefits. People with disabilties will need to go to work now more than ever.

One thing to remember about Medicaid in this state is that for every $1 the state spends it gets $3 back in federal funding. This is a money maker for the state it does not make since to cut. Why do the lawmakers not understand that? If the current budget passes tens of thousands of patients across the state will go without the proper care not to mention the job losses in our industries. They will keep cutting us unless we can organize as a group and fight. The NC Council is a joke and does nothing more than offer training they are suppose to be advocates for both providers and patients but they remain silent at this point and I feel they are out of touch with reality. They will not see another dime of my money. I know I’m not the only provider that feels this way! I urge everyone to contact their representatives in the house and senate and let them know the true cost of these cuts. We can not sit idle and let the out of touch policy makers completely destroy what little mental health we have left in this state. We still have time the senate has to reach an agreement with the house before it moves to the governor’s desk

We understand the need to cut the state’s budget, but at what cost to the people being served. We hear alot about the smaller minority MR/MI/CAP providers that are not complying with DHHS rule. All the recouping of money, which put alot of us in tax trouble. But what about those companies that are doing what is ask of them and complying with all the rules. We as a small provider who has put everything we own into our business will soon lose everything we own because DHHS decided instead of helping those companies that are in good standing with them to invent this new thing called CAHBA to close down all the smaller minority MR/MI/CAP providers. The National Accreditation couldn’t get enough of the minority providers to just give up and quit, so they continue to spend money on getting us out and less money on the people who need the services.
Governer Perdue was in LaGrange about two weeks ago to promote small business, she was about twenty mile from our office. While promoting small business in one town, not concern about small businesses being closed in Kinston. Some voices speak louder that others as a minority I understand that. So like alot of people I know who have or had a small business, we will try in another state once we get straight with the IRS. North Carolina not for minority who want to be in business. Thank you for reading this. This is not a complaint, We just understand the mind set we are dealing with.

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