This is an update to the Medicaid Trying To Cut Us Off post.
Last Friday our case worker for the Medicaid waiver, who works for Alabama Medicaid, called up to relay the message that the administrators are crunching the numbers on the program and it is too expensive.
In order to continue the program, they have to show that home care is less costly than their regular plan: warehousing me in an institution. They say that they are unable to make the numbers work and are “investigating.”
I have two counters to this:
1) Why were you able to make the numbers work when a federal judge was pressuring you, but now, four years later, it’s suddenly a problem?
2) I’m ventilator-dependent. It’s easy for me to die if I’m (even momentarily) abandoned. It would of course be a lot cheaper to dump me in some backwoods nursing home with inadequate care where I wouldn’t survive long (dead people don’t accrue medical costs) but to meet my needs adequately in a facility, you would need to provide an ICU-level of care, which would indeed cost way more than my current care. Why isn’t my survival part of the equation? If they’re more than number-zombies, then my survival should be the main variable.
Alabama Medicaid has a long, infamous history of cutting people off and leaving them to die, of eliminating entire programs–they tried to end the EPSDT waiver in 1997, cut our services in 1999 and it took a national campaign to force them to create a new program to continue my care past age 21 in 2003.
So when Medicaid tells me they can’t make the numbers work to justify the continued existence of the program, I take that as a threat to the program. My nursing agency sees it as a threat. It is a threat; no exaggeration.
Here’s an amusing snippet of IM chat with me and my brother Jamie:
Jamie says:
not inaccurate, no, but u came off as panicky
Nick says:
I come off as panicky BECAUSE I’M PANICKY!!
rightfully so!
Jamie says:
u sound like the zombie horde is bashing on the door
Nick says:
I feel like the zombie horde is bashing on the door
Nick says:
I’ve been fighting the zombie horde all my life and it’s time to move
Jamie says:
but they aren’t bashing on the door. we got a message that the zombie horde may or may not be in negotiations to fly in from Zombistan
Nick says:
May 17. negotiations with the zombie horde.
mark your calendar.
Jamie says:
and u know how long zombie negotiations take…
Nick says:
yep
Jamie says:
Ambassador: We’re prepared to offer $5 million and New Jersey. What are your concessions?
Zombassador: BRAAAAAAAAAAINS!!!!
Nick says:
ROFL!!!
Nick says:
Zombassador!!!
Nick says:
HAHHHAHAH!!!!!
I have to blog this. “Zombassador!” lol!!!
Stay tuned.
Nick