Legislative Bills 952, 826 strive to stop Medicaid cuts

^{Editor's note: Story edited at 6:22 p.m., Jan. 26 to provide the correct number for Sen. Dubas' Medicaid bill. The correct bill number is LB 826.}

For a long time, Maura Farruggia of Omaha thought she would never hear her granddaughter, Kareaden, say "grandma."

Farruggia and her husband have cared for the 6-year-old, who is inflicted with cerebral palsy, legal blindness and other disorders, since 2006. Farruggia quit her job to care for her granddaughter, but she didn't know how to teach Kareaden to do things that come naturally to most, like moving food with the tongue. The child couldn't sit up on her own and suffered from frequent anxiety attacks, which usually resulted in vomiting.

Medicaid changed everything.

Kareaden can walk with assistance, speak and attend school, thanks to Medicaid-funded respite care — a temporary professional care for the disabled.

"Now, she says she loves me," Farruggia said.

But assistance for many like Kareaden may be on the line with the Division of Medicaid & Long-Term Care's $21 million in Medicaid spending cuts, mostly relating to private and home nursing services. Sen. Jeremy Nordquist of Omaha introduced LB 952 this month to halt the cuts, but Sen. Annette Dubas of Fullerton wants to take it one step further: Her bill, LB 826, would require Medicaid cuts, both present and future, to be approved by the legislature.

"We need more than an opportunity (to review the cuts)," Dubas said at the bill's hearing Wednesday evening. "We need to be actively involved in these decisions."

Current law requires the department to release a report of upcoming spending cuts before the legislative session begins, allowing senators opportunities to modify or stop them. But the legislature has too small a hand in such crucial policy decisions, according to Dubas.

"These (cuts) affect the state budget," Dubas said. "Our dollars are finite, and we must be efficient in the way they are spent."

Dubas and Nordquist said the cuts will result in more expenditures on the state's behalf, because patients could be forced out of private nursing care into more costly public institutions.

"There will actually be more cost to the state in the long run, because people's health will deteriorate due to the cuts," said Jocelyn Luedtke, Dubas' legislative aide. "More people will be unable to work, unable to own their homes, unable to drive cars, which ultimately reduces tax rolls."

The bill's hearing was the last on a list of several related measures overseen by the Health and Human Services Committee. More than 50 citizens packed the hearing room, some there to testify to the committee, some simply to listen. Testimonies ranged from healthcare professionals to parents and relatives of the disabled to the disabled themselves. One man in a wheelchair took to the microphone to verbally express his support of the bill, despite his severe speech difficulty.

"The disabled community has fought to get out of public institutions for years," Dubas said. "The Medicaid cuts would have the effect of moving them back into the institutions they worked so hard to get out of."

More than 10 state organizations, including the AARP and the Nebraska Hospital Association, have expressed support of the bill, and seven senators introduced the bill with Dubas.

Farruggia was the second to testify as a proponent of the bill. At the end of her testimony, she showed the committee a picture of her granddaughter on a school bus. The girl who once couldn't sit upright was headed to her first day of kindergarten.

"If it weren't for (Medicaid), we would be lost," Farruggia said.

jacymarmaduke@

dailynebraskan.com