Granny Dumping in Florida

Florida’s new Medicaid reform law includes an incentive for health plans to cut seniors living in nursing homes. Many Florida residents now refer to the incentive as the “granny dumping bonus.”

The new law requires the majority of Florida’s 3 million Medicaid users to join private health care plans at the beginning of July 1, 2012, and seniors are not excluded from this privatization effort. One elder law attorney claims that the new law replaces longstanding rules regulating which patients can be discharged from nursing homes with vague terms that insurance companies will eventually choose.

The U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services must approve Florida’s Medicaid privatization effort before it can proceed. State Representative Joe Negron, who chaired the Senate Health and Human Services budget committee said:

I would never support a policy that discouraged nursing home care for seniors who need it, but the reality is that seniors want to have more home- and community-based options…Given the imminent irreparable harm and the inadequate protection for Florida’s elderly who need long-term care, they must be excluded from this experiment, and we will be fighting to make sure that CMS denies this request.

See Stacey Singer, Lawyers warn of “granny dumping” at Medicaid hearing in West Palm Beach, The Palm Beach Post, Jun. 14, 2011.

Special thanks to Jim Hillhouse (WealthCounsel) for brining this article to my attention.