Washington

What do the budget cuts mean for home care in Washington State?

This year, Washington State faced a $9 billion budget deficit – nearly 25% less revenue than expected. Majority Democrats chose to close the budget gap by making huge cuts to education, health care, and social services:

• 40,000 people were dropped from the Basic Health Plan
• 8,000 state employees and teachers will lose their jobs
• $1 billion cut from health and long-term care services
• $1 billion cut from public schools and higher education

Devastating Cuts/Some Victories

• We won more than $10 Million in new funding for health care benefits for home care workers, which will at least help reduce the need to increase deductibles and co-pays or reduce benefits.
• We won millions in new funding to improve training for long-term care workers. While some politicians wanted to undo Initiative 1029 entirely, we agreed to a 1-year delay of new training and certification requirements for home care workers (will now start in January 2011).
• We stopped efforts to make deeper cuts to wages and benefits for agency home care workers.

 
In the worst budget year since the Great Depression, we were probably one of the few groups in the state that actually won new funding above what was in the initial budget proposals. We won these victories because of the 35,000 times we sent emails, wrote post cards, made phone calls or met with legislators during Purple Presence and Lobby Day.
 


But because Democrats were unwilling to close corporate tax loopholes or find other ways to raise revenue to prevent these devastating budget cuts, the budget will have a negative impact on all publicly funded services and workers, including home care:

• Like all other public employees, home care worker wages will be frozen for the next two years.
• While we won some funding for health care, it may not be enough to prevent cost increases or benefit reductions.
• Hours of home care services for clients will be cut by an average of 3.5%.
• Adult day health services are being cut by 70%, which will force many adult day centers to close.
• In order to prevent deeper cuts to hours, the legislature opted to save money by transitioning many related agency home care clients and workers into the IP system.

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2009 Washington Legislative Session Nursing Homes Report

 The Bad: $94 Million in Cuts
Nursing homes were unable to escape cuts that will directly impact staffing, wages and resident care over the next two fiscal years.
 
The state’s highest Medicaid homes will be impacted the most, but every nursing home in the state will feel the pain of deep budget cuts.

The Good: Workers Defend Past Victories
On a positive note, workers attended Lobby Day in Olympia, visited the capitol on Purple Presence, made phone calls, wrote letters and sent emails. All of this effort paid off.

It was the key to preserving the gains we’ve made in the past several years, including: keeping the low-wage worker add-on we won in 2008; restoring over $4 million in funding lost in the 2009 Supplemental Budget; and maintaining statutory protection of the nursing home payment system.

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