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Poor, disabled may not escape Pa.’s budget axe
With Gov. Ed Rendell and legislators trying to decide how to fill a multibillion-dollar deficit, many state programs are expected to suffer. Both Rendell, a Democrat, and Republican legislators are proposing cuts in some of Pennsylvania’s human service spending.
The cost of delivering services for the poor, neglected and disabled tend to rise faster than other state programs, making them a particularly vulnerable area when the budget ax comes down. The services come at no small price either: They consume one out of every three dollars from the state’s main bank account, or close to $10 billion a year.
In the rural northcentral Pennsylvania borough of Coudersport, Charles Cole Memorial Hospital plans to close its obstetrical service — the next-closest one is nearly 40 miles away — if state government does not continue supplemental payments to hospitals that treat poor and uninsured pregnant women.
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Charles Cole and other hospitals across the state stand to lose tens of millions of dollars — maybe hundreds of millions — that they received last year to help them afford to treat the poor and uninsured. The money helps small, rural hospitals that are the only ones for miles around, as well as burn, trauma and obstetrical units.
At Charles Cole, Medicaid covers more than half of the women who have babies there. However, Medicaid typically underpays hospitals for their costs and makes the obstetrical unit particularly difficult to afford without the state’s supplemental payment, Pitchford said.
At the two hospitals in Pottsville’s Schuylkill Health System, executives are searching for ways to accommodate as much as $550,000 in state budget cuts in their $150 million budget and some hospital services may suffer, said health system president and CEO John E. Simodejka.
Wednesday marked the beginning of the second week the state government has operated without a budget.
Programs that help pay for community homes and daytime activities for the mentally retarded are unlikely to get enough of an increase to shrink a waiting list of 20,000, advocates say.
At least part of any increase would likely be earmarked for small wage increases for the people who work with the mentally retarded — bathing and dressing them, for example, or teaching job and domestic skills — for an average $11 an hour.
In addition, the waiting list is always growing because an average of 500 mentally retarded people graduate from high school special education programs each year, said Stephen H. Suroviec, the executive director of The Arc of Pennsylvania, a nonprofit advocacy group.
Chris Ingraham has been on a priority waiting list for six or seven years.
Ingraham, 33, who has Down syndrome and autism, works at daytime jobs at a nearby nonprofit organization that aids the disabled. He would like to move out of his mother’s house in Lititz and live more like a normal adult, but he seems to get no closer to the top of the list, said his mother, Karen Ingraham.
One of the problems is that he can be leapfrogged on the list, say, by someone else whose caregiving parent just died.
Chris Ingraham’s parents — they are divorced, but live near each other and share in Chris’ care — feel a special urgency to help him live independently: They are worried about being too old or too sick to care for him, she said.
Aside from other recent health scares, Karen Ingraham, 57, has multiple sclerosis.
“At any point, I could wake up and my body would be gone,” she said.
© 2009 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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