“Medicaid changes could help assisted living help more older adults,” by Joseph Demattos, Jr., McKnight’s Senior Living 

“It’s a fact that assisted living communities play a vital role in the country’s residential and healthcare infrastructures. They provide a unique mix of housing services, assistance with activities of daily living while allowing independence and social wellness for people as they age. … Sadly, it’s also a fact that assisted living communities are financially out of reach for many people and families in need. … Medicaid rates are lower for assisted living communities than nursing homes because, technically, they  are providing less intensive medical and nursing care. However, assisted living communities fill an important role in our healthcare sector. … A special Medicaid rate could be developed that exclusively helps people access assisted living communities. This rate could help bridge the current gap that makes Medicaid rates for assisted living several thousand dollars less than average market rates for such care and about one-fourth to one-third of the Medicaid rate paid to the higher medical model in nursing homes.”

LTC Comment, Stephen A. Moses, President, Center for Long-Term Care Reform:

The last thing policymakers should do is expand Medicaid’s notoriously inadequate financing to assisted living even more than already. That will ruin assisted living as it did nursing homes. See “The Sirens’ Call, The Primrose Path, and Assisted Living,” Assisted Living, April 2004. Instead Maryland should follow our analysis and recommendations in The Long-Term Care Financing Crisis:  Danger or Opportunity?  A Case Study in Maryland (1995).