Cuts to seniors’ Medicare-funded nursing facilities (SNFs) nationwide, begin kicking in today as a result of the Middle Class Tax Relief and Job Creation Act of 2012, signed into law earlier this year and this could cost Florida millions of dollars.
Florida has the biggest SNF Medicare cut, $60.5 million, part of $356 million in cuts which will be fully phased-in by 2015, according to the Alliance for Quality Nursing Home Care, and based on data from Avalere. Over 10 years, some $65 bilion SNF funding reductions are expected to take effect as a result of several different federal budgetary actions and regulatory changes made by Congress and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) since 2009, according to Avalere.
Congress cut medicare payments to nursing facilities by reducing reimbursement for so-called medicare “bad debt” – medicare co-payments not made by beneficiaries or state medicaid programs. This cut comes on the back of an 11.1 percent reduction to medicare nursing facility payment rates which was imposed by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services in August 2011, said Alliance for Quality Nursing Home Care, in a statement.
Industry officials remain concerned that with the continuous cuts to Medicare and Medicaid, there will be layoffs and an abandonment of expansions and rennovations to nursing facilities. Nationwide, estimates suggests that medicare payment reductions could result in at least 20,000 layoffs and the cancellation of approximately 400 nursing facility expansions or rennovations, generating approximately 20,000 – 25,000 new jobs.
Other states with big SNF Medicare cuts associated with the new tax law are, Ohio $30.5 million, Illinois $28.8 million, Pennsylvania $24.2 million and North Carolina $22.6 million.
