Frank Pallone: “The average cost of a nursing home now, the last I looked, was something like $30,000 to $40,000 a year, at least in my…”

“The average cost of a nursing home now, the last I looked, was something like $30,000 to $40,000 a year, at least in my area. How many middle-income people can afford that? Essentially what they do as you described is that they will pay private maybe for a year or two, depending on how much money they have, and then will go on Medicaid because they won't have any money left. They will end up being in a nursing home paid for by Medicaid a lot longer than that year or two that they happen to be paying out of their pocket. I don't particularly like that spend-down system that exists right now, but the bottom line is it depends heavily on Medicaid. From the information that I actually had here before me, the bottom line is that most of the Medicaid dollars actually are going to pay for programs like that for the elderly. We are talking about middle-income people, if you will, that become impoverished because of the cost of nursing home care.”