Faced with widespread complaints about cuts in Medicaid that would take effect Jan. 1, state lawmakers are considering coming back into special session before year’s end to fix problems in a program designed to help the elderly.
With Medicaid money, the Medicare Savings Program currently pays for Medicare Part B premiums, as well as deductibles and co-insurance for low-income seniors.
Legislators voted for the reductions as part of the two-year, $41.3 billion bipartisan budget that was signed by Gov. Dannel P. Malloy, but some lawmakers did not realize the impact of the cuts. Now they have been flooded with calls and emails from senior citizens who would lose their benefits at the start of the new year. The cuts would affect up to 86,000 senior citizens and the disabled, and the eventual number could reach as high as 113,000 as seniors are moved between the levels of the program, officials said.
The final numbers will not be known until the state Department of Social Services reviews the income levels of seniors under the complicated, three-tier program. Only those earning less than $12,060 starting in 2018 would be eligible for the full benefits — meaning subsidies for Part B premiums, deductibles, and co-insurance. In the current year, seniors can earn as much as $25,447 and still be eligible for full benefits.
Many of the seniors will be forced to pay an extra $134 a month, which has an impact on their low incomes.
At Federation Homes on Wintonbury Avenue in Bloomfield, 60 out of the 106 residents would be losing their benefits, officials said.
On Tuesday, Marie Potter of Somers received a letter from Department of Social Services informing her she was one of 86,000 people who would no longer be covered through the Medicare Savings Program. Potter, 66, couldn’t believe what she was reading.
“I felt like every nerve in my body was on fire,” Potter said. “I felt completely in shock. Complete and total disbelief.”
Potter receives $1,170 a month in Social Security, which places her just above the newly imposed income limit of $1,025 a month to qualify for the Qualified Medicare Beneficiary (QMB) tier, which covers both hospital and community health costs.
In July, Potter was told her Medicare coverage would be good at least through June of 2018.
“And then [Tuesday], out of the blue,” she said, “I get a notice saying it’s up in 31 days. I was expecting this to be all over the news. Except it wasn’t.”
Now, Potter is trying to wring $149 out of her meager monthly budget. She plans to cancel her $30-a-month phone plan and enroll in a free plan for low-income seniors. She’s haggling with the cable company to let her cancel her subscription without paying a $140 early termination fee which, she pointed out, is the price of a month’s health care.
“This is not a place in life you think you’d end up in. It’s embarrassing to take out a SNAP card at the grocery store,” Potter said. “But one thing I was always thankful for was my medical coverage. But now I’m scared to death.”
No one in the program would lose their Medicare coverage, which pays for medical expenses. Instead, they would lose the subsidies that allow them to help pay for coverage.
The swiftness with which the legislature lowered the program’s income eligibility cap has stunned caseworkers, who say the decision to cut the eligibility ceiling by more than half was made without input from the people it would most affect.
“Because of the way the budget happened, it was an overnight change,” said Dianne Stone, Newington’s director of elderly services. “It’s not something that got a public hearing or a lot of public notice. It’s like a bomb went off, and we’re just starting to dig through the rubble now.”
Those affected by the cuts are not “the poorest of the poor,” Stone said, but they are undeniably poor people. “These are people who live not at the poverty level but month to month, pay to pay. It’s not hyperbole to say people are going to have to start making choices between food and medicine.”
Kevin Brophy, director of elder law for Connecticut legal services, said many seniors have yet to realize they’ll lose coverage on Jan. 1.
“When they get cut off, they’re going to have to pay for Part B, about $130 a month,” Brophy said, referring to the portion of Medicare coverage that covers community health visits, “and they’re going to have to pay for co-payments and deductibles. And they’re going to be stunned.”
“I think a lot of representatives and senators didn’t even realize how badly this was going to hurt elderly people.”
Legislators have been flooded with phone calls.
“We’re going to work together to try and find a [resolution] for this situation,” House Speaker Joe Aresimowicz of Berlin said. “We did it well over the past couple of months. We’re going to continue that process. We’re going to come up with a list, and we’ll put that forward.”
House Republican Leader Themis Klarides of Derby agreed, saying that lawmakers are looking for the most “effective and efficient” way to handle the matter.
“We know we have concerns that span political parties and span different areas of the state, but there are certain deadlines that we have not put on ourselves but were put on us and that Jan. 1 Medicare savings deadline is one of them,’’ she said.
“We want this to be done… in the way that’s most in helping the citizens of Connecticut. If that means special session … that’s the way we will proceed.”
Lawmakers met behind closed doors for about an hour to discuss the Medicare Savings program and other budgetary changes.
Although the cuts were a surprise to some recipients, the idea was supported by Malloy in his original budget and received votes from both Republicans and Democrats in September.
Malloy did not make the final cuts because he was frozen out of the budget talks, and he said that the issue needs to be resolved by the legislature. The cuts were mandated as part of the bipartisan budget, and they were not part of the “lapses’’ that are unspecified cuts that are placed into the budget.
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