Remember when they said to the elderly: You won’t lose any benefits?

They lied.

By a vote of 53 to 41, the Senate on Saturday rejected a Republican effort to block cutbacks in payments to home health agencies that provide nursing care and therapy to homebound Medicare beneficiaries.

Republicans voted against the cuts, saying they would hurt some of the nation’s most vulnerable citizens. Most Democrats supported the cutbacks, saying they would eliminate waste and inefficiency in home care.

Who is the elderly’s friend now in Congress? Instead of holding the few bad actors accountable in this waste and inefficiency game, let’s punish EVERYONE by taking away benefits. How many nurses and aides will lose their jobs when these cuts go into effect?

Not to worry though, for there will be jobs, once they move all the former beneficiaries, into nursing homes.

All this, for what?

The Democrats’ health care bill would reduce projected Medicare spending on home care by $43 billion, or 13 percent, over the next 10 years. The savings would help offset the cost of subsidizing coverage for the uninsured.

I sure hope CNA’s get something out of this. I hope they get affordable health insurance. It seems like a very painful trade.

And some every day average people are extremely upset about this:

I am shocked that the Senate slipped such major Home Health Care cuts in on a snowy Saturday night in Washington, when everyone was sitting cozily at home with their family, watching a DVD or reading in front of the fire.

And I am disappointed, hurt, worried, and depressed that the Democrats were the ones who got the cuts passed. I feel sure they wouldn’t have done so if Teddy Kennedy had been there. And Obama, what do you have to say for yourself? Were you sitting cozily in front of the fireplace too, watching a Walt Disney movie with your adorable daughters?

I smell a fox, in fact several. We are in a democracy; I accept that we don’t all agree. But I worked hard to get Obama elected. I have fought hard to encourage others to support health care reform, and to support Obama’s plan, and now I feel betrayed.

And this comment:

I work as a hospice chaplain and every day see how home care keeps people out of hospitals and nursing homes. Curring the services of home health aides who are often paid at or below minimum wage, and often without health insurance themselves seems a particularly nasty and dysfunctional way to cut medicare costs.

One thing to keep in mind: The herd mentality is at work here. It’s cheaper to warehouse people into nursing homes, cut the doctor pay, regulate the cost of medications, supplies, food, CNA pay, nurse pay and the like, than it is to be human about all this.