McKnight's April 15, 2024
Long-term care operators were sold a pig in a poke. When Medicaid started paying for nursing home care after 1965, it looked like a pretty good deal. The new revenue stream vastly expanded severely limited payments from private payers. At the beginning, Medicaid reimbursement was generous and regulation, minimal. The industry expanded rapidly and corporatized.
But over time, long-term private payers at market rates dwindled to almost nothing, while Medicaid reimbursements declined to barely, if even, cover costs. LTC operators were left to depend on a much smaller number of short-term Medicare patients at higher rates to cover the shortfall. The financial fix nursing homes find themselves in now is the result.
Maybe all that was inevitable and unpredictable. But...
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