Cut jeopardizes access to home health care
Iam a home-care nurse from Monroe with the Visiting Nurse Association of Central Jersey, and I recently returned from a trip to Capitol Hill with nurses from every state in America. We were there on behalf of our patients to help preserve access to home care and hospice services amid $13 billion in suggested cuts to Medicare home health benefits in the Obama administration's proposed 2010 budget.

While we all recognize the economic reality of our times, I testified to Congress that this is the wrong place to look for savings. Research shows home care is more cost-effective than institutional care. The average homecare visit I make as a nurse costs Medicare $150; the average hospital day costs the government $1,500. Equally important is the fact that nine out of 10 senior citizens say they would prefer to receive health care in the comfort and familiar surroundings of home rather than in an institution. These proposed cuts will jeopardize the ability of agencies like mine from providing the care we do today to all patients, and jeopardize the ability of seniors to choose home care.

I delivered this message by telling the story of a patient of mine who is the face of Medicare home health in many ways. He suffers from a chronic, progressive disease — multiple sclerosis — and as a result was forced to retire from work in 1996 at age 40. In 2004, he went into a coma as a result of multiple infections, and when he came out of the coma he couldn't move his arms or legs. As a quadriplegic, he can only move from his head. It is my responsibility to visit him at home and to supervise the physician ordered personal care he receives. The potential problems I address keep him out of the hospital, and at home where he wants to be. He is an amazing man who maintains a great attitude and spirit of life under the most challenging of circumstances.

Virtually every American knows or loves someone like this, someone in declining health or living with a chronic medical condition who wants to stay in his or her own home while they receive treatment. The Medicare home health benefit makes this possible. It should be preserved, not reduced, even in tough economic times.
Kim Pahira
Monroe