To the editor:
I wish to compliment Rosie Hughes, Bangor Daily News Maine Focus reporter, for an excellent article on the plight of being a CNA in Maine nursing homes (3/27/17). My father built the Caribou Nursing Home in 1973 and our entire family has taken turns working there or at our acquired Presque Isle facility over the last 44 years.
People have short memories, including legislators. During my 40 years as a nursing home administrator, I’ve worked with various legislative committees to ensure adequate funding for the industry to render quality care to our residents. That experience includes being appointed to the Legislative Commission in 2013-14 that studied why nursing homes were closing and produced LD 1776 to fix the problem.
LD 1776 passed into law much needed changes to the nursing home funding mechanism. Several years later, the annual inflationary increase that was now law was not made. When I inquired as to why not, I was told that legislative leadership had decided the nursing homes had received enough of a boost in the prior few years and that was all they’d be getting. Since then some of the increased funding required by law has been done and some has not. Apparently legislators have the option of not abiding by the laws they pass?
My impression is the Legislature appears to act only when things reach crisis proportions. Note, the Commission that wrote LD 1776 was created to investigate why some nursing homes in Maine had closed (crisis). It was not rocket science to point out that for the prior 15-plus years, annual nursing home payment increases had averaged about 1 pecent per year while inflation was running 3 percent. Losing 2 percent for 15-plus years is a 30-plus percent reduction in payments. It’s no wonder places were going bankrupt.
Unfortunately I’ve seen this inadequate payment problem for many decades with an occasional funding band aid to keep the industry afloat. The problem is Maine and the other 49 states have decided that nursing home care isn’t as high a funding priority as other government programs are. That is why CNAs and other nursing home staff wages are low.
I want to point out that every penny of MaineCare money paid to nursing homes has to be used to pay for care or be returned to MaineCare. Every nursing home operator I know spends more than they are paid to care for MaineCare residents. Any profits made on privately funded or Medicare residents is used to cover the losses on MaineCare clients.
I hope Senator Troy Jackson’s legislation for increased CNA wages is passed and funded. Passing it without any funding will only cause more nursing facilities to close if they have to pass on wage increases without increased MaineCare money to do it with. This will be another band aid that will help for a few years, until the next round of closures occurs, and the legislature will have a new crisis then.
My wish is that the legislature would publicly prioritize the spending order of programs and fund the higher priority sufficient to do the job properly. Please decide if our sick elderly need quality nursing home care or not. If they do, then fund it properly. By the way, all MaineCare funding of nursing homes is 63 percent federal money. So every MaineCare dollar spent costs Maine only 37 cents, and that dollar generates probably 25 cents in Maine sales/income taxes, not to mention providing jobs throughout Maine.
This isn’t rocket science.
Phil Cyr, administrator
Caribou Rehab and Nursing Center
