How would a government shutdown affect jobs in a nursing home?

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Specializes in LTC.

With fears mounting about a possible government shutdown, how would it affect nursing homes? Since over 90% of residents in nursing homes are covered by medicare or medicaid, how would that affect the operation of a nursing home?

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Specializes in Med surg, LTC, Administration.
With fears mounting about a possible government shutdown, how would it affect nursing homes? Since over 90% of residents in nursing homes are covered by medicare or medicaid, how would that affect the operation of a nursing home?

Believe me, if the US were ever to shut down, we would have much bigger problems than our jobs.

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Not exactly a government shutdown such as what we have seen in other countries but California is a good small scale example. When the state went through its budget crisis (again) a couple of years ago, LTC facilities, hospital and doctors or anybody who receives state money, no money came in for over 6 months. A few facilities closed. Some staff went without paychecks while still working. Some had to quit and relocate. Patients who were scheduled to be moved to LTC were held at the hospitals which then created more expense and a back up in bed availability.

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Specializes in LTC.

The people who run my facility are idiots. This government shutdown doesn't sound too promising for me.

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Specializes in CVICU.

From what I understand about government shut downs the nursing home probably wouldn't see much difference. National parks close, federal monuments (like the Washington monument) close to visitors. People who aren't already on Medicare/Medicaid and are in the application process would probably see a delay, but those who are already in the system wouldn't even notice it. The facility itself might see some delays in payment, but once business resumes they'd get the back pay. Granted, I'm not an expert in these things, but we've had 4 or 5 of these shutdowns since 1981 and other than hearing about it in the news, I don't recall it really affecting day to day living for most people. It seems like it mostly affects federal employees whose jobs get eliminated or shut down for a period of time.

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A federal shutdown due to budget passage delays would be inconvenient in terms of access to services support/timely payment, but is much less worrisome than some other looming potentialities e.g. major services cuts on state and federal level, freezing of the debt ceiling resulting in default to services payments.

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ah, it happened when clinton was president (gov shutdown), i don't remember hearing about nursing homes or their residents falling off the face of the earth or anything else, so doubt it will have much effect.

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I don't think there will be changes to entitlement programs, such as Medicare and Medicaid, which are huge contributors to overall government spending.

I just hope we make sensible reductions in this spending and create a better environment for job growth!

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A government "shutdown" won't stop the entitlement checks from going out; that would be the LAST thing to go.

Does everyone here realize just what a complete disaster the federal government has gotten us into over the past several decades with all these entitlement programs? Think about this: over 61% of all federal spending goes to entitlement payments (Social Security, unemployment, welfare, medicare, medicaid/SCHIP), and interest payments on the national debt (interest is 4.6% of the federal budget).

Furthermore, are you aware that the federal government has to borrow more than $0.40 of every dollar it spends? Put this together with the facts in the previous paragraph.

What this means is this: entitlement spending eats up ALL (and then some) of what the government takes in via tax revenues, and it has to borrow the rest. They could abolish and completely shut down the departments of Health and Human Services, Transportation, Veterans Affairs, State, Housing & Urban Development, Education, Homeland Security, Energy, Agriculture, Justice, Commerce, Labor, Treasury, Interior, the EPA, the National Science Foundation, and everything else and they STILL wouldn't be able to start paying down the national debt because they'd still have to be borrowing money just to make the entitlement and interest payments.

It is impossible to have any meaningful action taken on our fiscal problems without doing something about entitlements. These entitlements have already bankrupted our entire nation.

The fact that the government is already scaring people with threats of a government shutdown because someone is talking about trying to make tiny, INSIGNIFICANT cuts shows that they have no intention whatsoever of trying to fix the actual problem.

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Specializes in School Nursing.
A government "shutdown" won't stop the entitlement checks from going out; that would be the LAST thing to go.

Does everyone here realize just what a complete disaster the federal government has gotten us into over the past several decades with all these entitlement programs? Think about this: over 61% of all federal spending goes to entitlement payments (Social Security, unemployment, welfare, medicare, medicaid/SCHIP), and interest payments on the national debt (interest is 4.6% of the federal budget).

Furthermore, are you aware that the federal government has to borrow more than $0.40 of every dollar it spends? Put this together with the facts in the previous paragraph.

What this means is this: entitlement spending eats up ALL (and then some) of what the government takes in via tax revenues, and it has to borrow the rest. They could abolish and completely shut down the departments of Health and Human Services, Transportation, Veterans Affairs, State, Housing & Urban Development, Education, Homeland Security, Energy, Agriculture, Justice, Commerce, Labor, Treasury, Interior, the EPA, the National Science Foundation, and everything else and they STILL wouldn't be able to start paying down the national debt because they'd still have to be borrowing money just to make the entitlement and interest payments.

It is impossible to have any meaningful action taken on our fiscal problems without doing something about entitlements. These entitlements have already bankrupted our entire nation.

The fact that the government is already scaring people with threats of a government shutdown because someone is talking about trying to make tiny, INSIGNIFICANT cuts shows that they have no intention whatsoever of trying to fix the actual problem.

Can you link some sources that support these statistics?

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Can you link some sources that support these statistics?

It's unfortunate, really, that these very simply fiscal facts about what our government is doing isn't common knowledge, but the info is easily accessible and available directly from government-provided data.

Here we go:

2011 projected federal deficit: $1.5 trillion

This is money the government doesn't have, but is spending anyway.

Source: the Congressional Budget Office Link

2011 projected spending: $3.69 trillion

Source: Obama's 2011 Budget Proposal: How It's Spent

Here's the math: $1.5t/$3.69t = 0.4065 = 41%

That's the bit about the government having to borrow $0.41 cents of every dollar it spends

Now, as far as where the money goes: Here is a nice little graph that breaks down federal spending by category. I won't link the actual image because it's huge, but I'll summarize the numbers:

Percentages listed are the % of total spending for the indicated category

Social Security: 19.63%

Unemployment/Welfare/Other mandatory: 16.13%

Medicare: 12.79%

Medicaid/SCHIP: 8.19%

Interest on national debt: 4.63%

19.63 + 16.13 + 12.79 + 8.19 + 4.63 = 61.37%

So, since revenues only cover 59% of what the government spends, and 61% of what they spend goes to entitlement programs and interest payments, that means that every dime of what the government takes in taxes goes directly to paying for entitlements and unavoidable interest, and that it is IMPOSSIBLE to even begin addressing paying down the debt without drastic action on entitlements.

Consider further that we aren't even feeling the full impact of baby boomer retirements yet, and interest rates are being held artificially low by games being played by the Federal Reserve. What do you think will happen to these numbers when the retired population increases dramatically and the interest payments on the national debt increase as rates rise?

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Oh, one other thing I neglected to mention: I haven't directly mentioned DEFENSE spending here, which is a popular target when people start getting upset about the idea of cutting entitlements.

Defense is 18.74% of total federal spending, and that is also part of the "everything else", i.e., not part of entitlements, I was talking about. So, even if we eliminated our entire military - ALL OF IT - along with everything else except for entitlement programs and payments on the debt, we STILL couldn't balance the budget.

Scary, huh?

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