Many people have argued against providing home care to disabled people. They think that people with disabilities will be better served in institutional settings rather than community settings. CNN, on October 13th, 2009, reported that home care was more expensive than institutional care.
Based on mathematical calculations, this is not true. According to the annual Genworth Financial Study of 2009, the median average cost for a nursing home in Massachusetts is $101,835.00 for a double room. For a private room, it's $107,310.
Now, calculate the cost of a person who receives paid 112.5 hours of paid personal care assistance, and 35 additional hours of unpaid home care due to the way the Massachusetts overnight care plan works, to cover community based PCAs. This consumers total bill which is financed by the state will be $70,824.00. This is representative of home based care in Massachusetts where PCA's (personal care assistants) are paid $12.00 per hour which is substantially more than most of the country. Including figures for the unusual person who would receive 24 paid hours everyday, the cost paid by the state to care for them is $105,676. Both figures include Massachusetts benefits for PCA's such as time and half on four holidays.
If you break down the extra cost presented by the 24 hour care needed superuser, it's only $321.00 per month. That's the cost of an Apple Iphone with 8GB of memory. The state could merely decide to redirect some of the money allocated to people for not receiving 24 hour care because not everyone needs that. Also, some people enjoy their alone time. It would only take 26.75 hours per month at the current rate of pay to accommodate the occasional superuser. Alternatively, the state could simply pay $12.00 an hour for the 16 hours the consumer is awake and pay Massachusetts minimum wage of $8.00 per hour for the night shift. This makes seem unfair to the overnight PCA's. However, currently overnight PCA's receive (on average) $24.00 for an eight hour shift because the state theorizes that they are sleeping. Workers are not going to object to a $40.00 per night increase.
Given the state of economic recession that the country finds itself in, can we really afford to spend tens of thousands of dollars keeping people who've committed no crime inside an institution? We can provide these same services in a much less restrictive setting and provide them with one on one care. Additionally, a multitude of jobs would be created when these people move out into the community. Job creation is essential to remove us from the recession.
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