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SRS REDUCTION WILL HURT PEOPLE WITH
LIFE THREATENING ILLNESSES

ACT NOW to PREVENT THIS!!

Starting July 1, 2002, people who are terminally ill and receiving Physical Disability (PD) Waiver services will no longer be eligible to receive hospice services in their homes. This will force people with life threatening illnesses to choose between Home and Community Based Services (HCBS) and the Hospice Medicaid Benefit. This is the result of policy and budgetary decisions made during the 2002 legislative session.

Please note: If a person has both Medicare and Medicaid, they may be eligible for Hospice Medicare Benefits and also the HCBS-PD Waiver. This policy would affect people with Medicaid only.

So beginning July 1st, people with life threatening illnesses on the PD Waiver will have to choose between effective palliative care (pain control) and in home personal care attendant services. Hospice staff are the experts on good pain control. People with life threatening illness can be much more comfortable with hospice assistance. This helps people extend their quality of life during the last stages of life. Many medical doctors, even specialists in cancer and other life threatening illnesses, are not as good
at pain management as hospice.

Through hospice services, regular home nursing visits replace the frequent, painful medical trips that would be required without hospice care. Hospice also offers a spiritual advisor, social work services, and grief counseling, along with respite volunteers. Home health aide hours in the home are very limited. Hospice services cannot provide the number of hours of personal attendant care for shopping, laundry, housework, etc. that the Physical Disabilities Waiver can provide. Hospice also cannot provide night support.

It is very unfair for Medicaid consumers with life threatening illnesses to have to choose between these services. This especially hurts people who live alone or do not have a lot of family and friends nearby to help out. It basically forces people who live alone and have a life threatening illness into a nursing home for pain management, or to stay at home without good pain management. It is an unfair choice. If you agree, please write  SRS and let them know.

Write to:

Laura Howard, Assistant Secretary of SRS
Docking State Office Building, 6th Floor
915 SW Harrison Street
Topeka, Kansas 66612

Important points to include in your letter, along with your own personal
comments:

• Express opposition to Policy B 2002-034, which states that people on the PD Waiver who are terminally ill and only have Medicaid coverage will have to choose between PD Waiver and Hospice services. Starting July 1, 2002, people will no longer be eligible to receive both.
  

• This will force many people who remain in their homes during the last part of their lives to go without essential hospice or PD Waiver services, or be forced into a nursing home.
  

• Hospice and HCBS services are not duplicate services. They provide very different services.
  

• Medicaid consumers with life threatening illness should NOT have to choose between Home and Community Based (PD Waiver) Services and good pain control management. This is unfair and inhumane.

Please write as soon as possible. We CAN change this unfair policy!!
Thank you,

Beth Chao  
ILS/HCBS Waiver Programs 
bethc@independenceinc.org

Bob Mikesic
Advocacy/ADA Coordinator 
bobm@independenceinc.org

(785) 841-0333, 1-888-824-7277