Paul Ryan's Budget Cuts: Medicaid

This article focuses on Medicaid and whom the cuts in Medicaid will affect. Many people who have not had to deal with a dehabilitating disease have a two dimensional view of entitlement programs. I offer them our experience.

The first hint I personally had of my mother's senility was when I accompanied her to a new car dealership. She got inside a new car to test drive it. I was in the back seat and the salesperson was in the front passenger seat. My mother had been driving for years before this. She sat in the drivers seat and took time to become accustomed to the new arrangement of accessories. She started the car and then, to my surprise, asked where the break pedal was. This new car had an automatic transmission just like the previous car she had driven.

Her senility became worst and it became very obvious to my brothers, sister and me that it was much more than senility. My mother had always been in charge of finances. She paid the bills using a checking account and balanced that checking account with each and every bill she paid. But not long after the incident with the car, she lost the ability to balance the checking account. She would add the amount of a check to the balance rather than subtracting it. She did not understand that her logic was incorrect. She insisted that her way of balancing the checking account was correct. As a result, a number of checks bounced.

The situation was constantly getting worse. My mother owned the house. She had renters living on the first floor while she lived on the second floor. One day, the tenants complained that their windows would not stay open. My mother could not understand why she should pay for it. Her logic was it was their window. They should pay to get it fixed. It was not their window. We had a real hard time trying to explain it to her.

My sister was burdened with the checking account. I helped where I could. But the situation continued to deteriorate. My wife and I received a phone call from my mom who claimed that her toilet wouldn't flush. We tried to explain to her that all she had to do was pour water into the toilet to flush it. She was unable to understand this. Even though the trap was not clogged, she thought that pouring water in it would cause it to overflow. Of course, that was not true. The truth was that the toilet tank was not emptying into the toilet. In years past, she understood this simple concept.

One day we had the chimney cleaned. Although my mother may have had a tough time understanding it, she did write out the check to pay the chimney sweeper. Then, less than a month later, another unsolicited chimney sweeper offered to clean the chimney. She invited him over and he cleaned the chimney. Then he requested payment of $50.00. She had no understanding of why she owed him $50. My sister went over her house, paid the chimney sweeper the $50 and made it clear that this chimney sweeper had taken advantage of our mother.

At times my mother would forget how to get dressed. She forgot how to operate the microwave. One time she placed a cup of water directly on a stove burner and turn on the stove burner. She burnt her finger when she reached to take the cup off the stove burner.

When my sister took her shopping at a grocery store she had been in thousands of times, she would cling to my sister for fear of getting lost.

We were all worried about her. None of us were able to be there 24 hours a day. A visiting nurse was very expensive and her insurance did not cover all of it. I would go there every morning before going to work to ensure that she ate a breakfast. I had to work and so did my sister, but we would worry every time she was left alone in that house.

One day, my mother phoned me early in the morning. She was crying. She told me she could not get out of bed. She forgot how to get out of bed!. I told her to calm down and not to worry. I would be over immediately. My sister phoned the fire department to enter the house. An ambulance took my mother to the local hospital. The doctor assessed her condition quickly. She was in the advanced stages of Alzheimer's disease. He said he would find a reason to hold her there until the social worker found a nursing home.

We could not take care of her. I felt that my sister had taken on most of the burden. I would never insist on her staying with our mother. It was just too much for her and too unfair.

After she was in the nursing home we sold the house. The funds went to the nursing home to pay for her care. Her savings also went to the nursing home. She was then placed on title 19 better known as Medicaid. We had no choice. We could not afford the $8500 dollars a month it would cost to keep her in the nursing home. My sister visited her every single day. I visited her as often as I could. After being in a nursing home for five years, our mother passed away.

For those readers who 'think' they can handle a person who suffered repeated strokes without a nursing home, I applaud the gesture and the effort. But as my wife could tell you from experience, it is a daunting task that will drain you of your emotions and leave you with no time for yourself and no time to sleep. My wife had a system set up where she could hear any move her mom made. She feared her mother would fall off the bed and hurt herself. My wife got very little rest. She became an emotional wreck, unable to enjoy herself even when her brother took over for a night. Her mom had been getting more and more difficult to care for. Her mom had become delusional. She would ask for a glass of vinegar when she really wanted a glass of milk. She wouldn't leave my wife alone for more than two minutes. During that year, my wife slowly came to the point where she simply could not handle her mom.

One other group of people whom cuts in Medicaid will hurt: Those people who hang out on the front porch all day . . Those people many conservatives consider to be lazy. Those people with severe emotional or mental problems through no fault of their own. People with mental illness. They appear lazy to others, but they are not lazy. They are consumed by their problems. Some of them are paranoid. Some of them see things that are not there. All of them are totally dependent on Medicaid.

That's who Paul Ryan's budget will hurt. Not the able-bodied US citizen. The widow who ended up on Welfare after her husband died leaving her with several small children to care for and no time for a job. The people like my mother who ended up in a nursing home after spending her whole life caring for us. Everything was about her children. My mother would go without a decent pair of shoes, without a new dress . . . All for us. If we gave her money, she would spend it on things we needed. My dad worked his whole life despite severe problems because of his experiences in the Second World War.

It's easy to take away from the helpless when you see them from a distance. It's like you're up in a helicopter looking at all the little dots moving down the street. They are no longer people. They are just little dots. What does it matter if they bear the brunt of national debt burden?

It's easy for Paul Ryan. He doesn't have to visit a person with schizophrenia and tell that person that that person must make take on the majority of the burden for our national debt. Paul Ryan can look down from that helicopter and divorce himself of all emotion. He could support corporate welfare, allowing tax breaks to exist where they are no longer needed. But he won't be merciful toward those who need the most help.

The concept of block grants for Medicaid will force states to raise taxes in order to finance nursing homes. So for many states, this will force on them an additional burden. The transfer of financial burdens from the Federal Government to the states started in the 1970s. The process was excelled under President Ronald Reagan. Though the process helped reduce the national debt, it transferred the burden of increased taxation onto the states. Thus, our government attempted to convert a national problem into a state problem. As usual, it didn't work. When a problem exists nation wide, it is indeed a national problem. Placing the burden on the states is not the answer.

It didn't work because of the insatiable thirst for smaller government and less taxes. It didn't work because every Republican president cut the block grants to the states. And it won't work with Medicaid for the exact same reasons it never worked in the past.