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

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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?

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?

While social security is a big chunk of this, many people have already paid it - there will be a lot of ****** off people that have had a bunch of money deducted from their paychecks for their entire life if they get told that social security isn't going to pay that out. That's not the same as welfare say, where the people have not pre-paid that money.

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Specializes in Pediatric/Adolescent, Med-Surg.

The last government shut down was in 1995. While most people say they did not feel an affect, government employees quit getting paychecks and social security checks quit getting mailed. As a nurse in the DC area, I am concerned that if the government truly shuts down this Fri, many of my pts will be in a financial bind, and I find it doubtful that there will be resources to assist them.

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This is pretty depressing. What are the solutions?

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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This is pretty depressing. What are the solutions?

There are no solutions that do not involve great pain.

Think of it like this: Imagine that your family has a budget where you are spending $100,000/yr to maintain all your expenses and standard of living. The problem is, you only make $60,000 and have to borrow the extra $40,000k/year to cover all the bills. What are you going to do? Keep borrowing the extra $40k every year? How long do you think you can keep that up? That's where our Federal Government is at.

Bottom line is, the .gov has made alot of promises over the years which are mathematically impossible to keep. Any solution that doesn't begin with cutting the federal budget by 40% isn't a solution at all. The first thing we need to do is stop trusting professional politicians in the central government to "fix" every problem. Given that they have already proven that they simply cannot be trusted with our money, why are we so eager to trust them with our healthcare?

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Like I tell my husband...it seems like our health care will be eating healthy and exercising!:nurse:

There are no solutions that do not involve great pain.

Think of it like this: Imagine that your family has a budget where you are spending $100,000/yr to maintain all your expenses and standard of living. The problem is, you only make $60,000 and have to borrow the extra $40,000k/year to cover all the bills. What are you going to do? Keep borrowing the extra $40k every year? How long do you think you can keep that up? That's where our Federal Government is at.

Bottom line is, the .gov has made alot of promises over the years which are mathematically impossible to keep. Any solution that doesn't begin with cutting the federal budget by 40% isn't a solution at all. The first thing we need to do is stop trusting professional politicians in the central government to "fix" every problem. Given that they have already proven that they simply cannot be trusted with our money, why are we so eager to trust them with our healthcare?

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To dp1200,

So do you think all entitlements should be eliminated?

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Well we obviously can't eliminate ALL entitlements. Where would insurance companies pick up their pay checks?

To dp1200,

So do you think all entitlements should be eliminated?

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