Medicaid cuts worry those with disabilities
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Carol Veschi, who relies on Medicaid to help care for her 18-year-old son with autism, is worried about how changes to the government program could affect her son.
Why it matters: There are a lot of unknowns about how the cuts could affect people with disabilities enrolled in Medicaid.
- "We're all scared," metro Atlanta resident Veschi tells Axios.
Zoom in: Part of what makes Medicaid so essential to people with developmental disabilities in Georgia and across the country is the waiver component, which allows recipients to stay in their communities rather than live in a nursing home or other care facility.
- For Veschi's son, the waiver has also provided enrollment in a work "sampling" program that offers job training and ultimately helped him secure a paying job, so he can pay taxes.
- Plus, it's given him a social life that makes him happy, Veschi says.
Without waivers, Veschi says, she would have to choose to either "institutionalize" her son or her spouse, who is also disabled.
- The state pays about $30,000 for her son's services, but she estimates it would cost her around $200,000 a year to pay for a care home.
What they're saying: "What we've seen in the past ... is when big cuts are made to Medicaid across the board, some of those cuts trickle down, and they do impact people with developmental disabilities," D'Arcy Robb, executive director of the independent state agency Georgia Council on Developmental Disabilities, tells Axios.
Threat level: Funding of waivers is optional, so states that will be forced to make cuts could be tempted to eye that service, Robb says.
During the pandemic, Georgia's Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Disabilities, which administers the waivers, faced a $123 million budget reduction and the elimination of more than 300 positions.
- The waivers weren't touched, but the personnel cuts made it harder to ensure recipients were getting the care they needed. It also made it harder to enroll people in the program.
- Georgia had (and still has) thousands of people on the waiver waiting list, and with staffing at bare bones, the state was only granting 100 waivers a year, Robb says.