Kansas Governor Mark Parkinson says the state faces its worst economic crisis since the Great Depression -- and it's not over. While
we're waiting to see how the math whizzes in the state legislature deal with the problem, the journalists at the Kansas Health Institute are doing some great reporting on how state budget cuts are likely to hurt real people. Yesterday, we recommended Dave Ranney's story "Waiting lists for state services expected to grow." Here's another installment in Ranney's series.
HUTCHINSON -- For most of the past year, David Farris, 55, has lived in a nursing home here.
He hates everything about the place.
"It's like living in a prison," Farris said. "It's terrible. The food is terrible. There's nothing to do. You just sit around all day. They feed you, give you pills twice a day and a shower twice a week. That's it.
"Before my father passed away, he did everything he could to keep from going to a nursing home," he said. "I can see why."
Farris ended up in the nursing home after a Nov. 6, 2008 accident in which he fell about five feet onto concrete. The fall left him with a fractured wrist and a crushed pelvis.
"My right pelvis was broken in six places," he said. "My left pelvis was broken in three places. Man, that hurt."
At the time of the accident, Ranney reports, Farris working at a hog
farm near Marquette and had health insurance. But because he couldn't
work, the insurance quit paying his bills after a couple of months.
Though he can now walk a little bit with a cane, Farris is still in a
nursing home.
Because he's poor and disabled, Medicaid covers his stay.The full story's here.
With help from a case manager at the Prairie Independent LivingResource Center, he has applied for Medicaid-funded services designed
to help people with physical disabilities live in a community setting
-- a small apartment, most likely -- rather than a nursing home.
He has been on the program's waiting list for almost a year."This makes no sense to me," he said. "I was told Medicaid is paying
this place $4,300 a month for me to be here. But then I see ads in the
Hutch paper for apartments with all bills paid for $465 a month -- and
those are the expensive ones.
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