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Coalition visits Riverstreet Manor to gain support for continuing current funding.
WILKES-BARRE – Caregivers, residents and family members gathered at the Riverstreet Manor Nursing Home Thursday to sign a petition to members of Pennsylvania’s congressional delegation asking that any health care reform bill does not include crippling cuts in Medicare funding.
Representatives of The Coalition to Protect Senior Care are touring the country’s nursing homes asking them to urge their respective members of Congress not to support the currently proposed health care reform measure as long as it includes Medicare funding cuts for seniors in nursing homes by more than $32 billion over 10 years.
In Pennsylvania, which would be the seventh hardest hit state if the cuts went through, the cuts would total $2.1 billion. In the 11th Congressional District alone, where Riverstreet Manor is, the loss over the next decade would be about $142 million.
“How can you call this reform?” asked Sherri Toland, a certified nursing assistant at the facility. She said the loss of funds would mean the loss of staff and those who need their care and support would suffer the most.
“We need more of us, not fewer,” Toland, of Wilkes-Barre, said. “These Medicare cuts, should they be enacted, would be devastating.”
Lisa Cantrell, president of The Coalition to Protect Senior Care, said the group is not opposed to health care reform. In fact, she said, she “wholeheartedly supports it.” But the group’s “opposed to financing it through cutting the Medicare Part A funding.” That funding is for short and long-term rehabilitative care for nursing homes and other skilled nursing facilities.
Ron Patti, the administrator at Riverstreet Manor, said the cuts would be “huge” and “devastating” and facilities would have to scale back services and staff and some could close.
The petition, signed by nearly 100 of Riverstreet Manor’s 121 residents and 140 employees, will be copied and sent to members of Congress in advance of the start of the fall session in Washington, D.C. next week.
“Our voices can carry, with this petition, all the way through the halls of Congress,” Patti said.
Among the first to sign the 10-foot-long petition was facility resident Joseph Olesky. The former superintendent of Wyoming Area School District suffered a stroke earlier this year and was brought to tears during the program listening to what the cuts would mean.
“I can’t imagine what my life would be like right now if we didn’t have this place or the people that work here,” Olesky said.