2000 General Assembly
Passes Mandate The 2000 Indiana General Assembly passed legislation that mandates the state of Indiana to apply to the federal government for two new Medicaid waivers by October 1 of 2000. The legislature passed the new law, House Enrolled Act (HEA) 1197, at the urging of the many organizations that compose the Indiana Home Care Task Force. CAC is a member of the Task Force and help craft the law’s language while lobbying for the act at the State House. Because of this law, public funding will now be available for the first time to provide assisted living and adult foster care services for low income disabled and elderly Hoosiers. Additionally, the law calls for the expansion of existing adult day care services through Medicaid waivers. However, not everyone is pleased with the new law. The Indiana Health Care Association (IHCA), the trade association that represents the nursing home industry, is working to restrict the application of the law. That association is trying to convince the state’s Family and Social Services Administration to design waivers with eligibility standards that are so strict that virtually nobody who is eligible for nursing home care could qualify for assisted living and adult foster care. The IHCA position is an absurdity since the reason for the waivers is to provide higher quality and less expensive forms of long term care for persons with disabilities. According to John Cardwell, CAC’s legislative director and chairperson of the Indiana Home Care Task Force, the IHCA is up to its old tricks. Cardwell states, "the nursing home lobby continues to use its financial and political clout to force Hoosiers into nursing homes when they should be cared for elsewhere. Along with the CHOICE home care program, these new waivers for assisted living, adult foster care and adult day care will allow people to pick the type of long term care that is best for them. It has been documented that people who use alternative forms of long term care are healthier and live better lives on average than people in nursing homes." Publicly funded assisted living, adult foster care, and adult day care programs are also important to taxpayers. Like Indiana’s CHOICE program, these new waiver services will all be substantially less expensive than Medicaid funded nursing home care.
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