Medicaid Benefits

A few years ago, Mr. Henry Purchase was forced to pay a huge amount of money to cater for his aging mother, because Medicaid or Medicare could not cover the expenses for the long-term care. Statistics released in the year 2009 indicated that Medicaid only covered 43% of the $240 billion spent on elderly and disabled for the long-term care. For a long period, pointing out who should pay for the long-term care services for people living with disability and elderly has been difficult for the state policy makers, patients, federal, and families. This has been considered as a major national problem because it is relatively invisible when it happens in a family. It becomes difficult to bear the cost of care required to cater for an aging parent or disabled family member, calling for a need for lawmakers to revisit the issue. Although the policy makers made an effort to address the issue through CLASS or Development of Community Living Assistance and Support in the year 2010, the program stopped in the year 2011. In January, House Republicans re-appealed to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act with an aim of avoiding its resurface. Although their effort succeeded as part of what was considered as fiscal cliff legislation, the lawmakers failed to address the issue fully, but instead developed a care commission to analyze the issue and then give recommendations to the government (Zigmond, 2013).

HHS' Administration feels that the issue needs to be addressed because the number of elderly people above 65 is likely to be about 72.1 million in the year 2030, a figure that is twice the numbers in 2010. Mr. Minnix feels that a task force panel should be developed to address the thorny issue and provide a responsibility and role outline for government, private and public sectors as well as individuals in order to realize a competitive insurance product. Burns revealed that the effect is terrible because Medicare pays the service of skilled nurses for only 100 days after which the patients losses the cover. The patient receives comprehensive cover in the first 20 days and a small percentage for the next 80 days. Although some individuals are capable of paying for the long-term care, they have been hindered by the limited option after several insurance companies dropped out because they could not afford the high cost involved.  For an individual to be eligible for the Medicaid services, he/she must attain the medical and financial requirement, which has turned to be too expensive for most Americans. Garner advises the state that a few programs can be more efficient than one program, especially when different organs are involved (Zigmond, 2013).

This article relates to the benefits, where it enlightens the government, institutions, businesses, and individuals about the problems faced by the long-term health care. It brings out the need to have a better management of Medicaid and Medicare in order to ensure improved services to the elderly and disabled. Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act can help improve the benefits that patients receive from Medicaid. The Act should be well defined to cover the required long-term health care. From the information acquired from this article, business community is advised to consider a long-term health care to their workers since the national system does not provide adequate services. It is recommendable for businesses to introduce systems and schemes that can supplement services provided by Medicare and Medicaid after retirement or in case of disability. That is the only way that an employer can show appreciation to the workers after many years of service.