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Morning Read: Future of Essex County nursing home questioned again

by on August 1st, 2011

The property tax cap is adding more pressure to Essex County officials to find ways of trimming deficits, and one question back on the table this morning will be the future of the Horace Nye Nursing Home, located in Elizabethtown.

This from the Plattsburgh Press Republican.

Officials plan to discuss the Nursing Home at their regular meeting Monday morning, when supervisors could potentially vote on hiring a brokerage firm to test the waters for potential buyers.

“A vote is a possibility to put it out there to a broker,” [county Chairman Randy] Douglas said Friday.

The county is currently operating the 100-bed home at an annual loss of roughly $2 million.

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8 Comments on “Morning Read: Future of Essex County nursing home questioned again”

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  1. knuckleheadedliberal says:
    August 1, 2011 at 7:58 am

    Here we go down the path that leads us back to the 19th century.

  2. knuckleheadedliberal says:
    August 1, 2011 at 7:59 am

    Apropos of nothing, I wish everyone a Joyous and Peaceful Ramadan!

  3. Peter Hahn says:
    August 1, 2011 at 9:48 am

    I don’t know why the 19th century is so appealing (for the tea party types). Life expectancy – even for the rich – was pretty short. Most people lived in conditions that are common to poor people in third world countries.

    Taxes were low and there weren’t many burdensome regulations. Businesses could do whatever they wanted, and it was “buyer beware”. No nanny state then.

  4. It's Still All Bush's Fault says:
    August 1, 2011 at 1:29 pm

    I believe that there are provisions for “how to exceed the 2%” within the legislation, are there not? It seems like that is being dismissed too readily in the discussion.

  5. If Clapton is God, Warren Haynes is Jesus says:
    August 1, 2011 at 1:51 pm

    Yes, there are provisions to “override” the 2% cap. I’m just not sure increasing the tax rate beyond the 2% cap in order to maintain a county owned nursing home is one of them.

  6. Mervel says:
    August 1, 2011 at 2:35 pm

    Why is the nursing home losing money?

    It probably shows one of the fundamental problems with health care costs in this country.

  7. It's Still All Bush's Fault says:
    August 1, 2011 at 4:00 pm

    Part of the reason that the nursing home MAY be losing money is the difference between self-pay and medicare reimbursement. If the membership within the nursing home is heavily weighted to the medicare side, the reimbursement rates are probably a bit below operating costs.

  8. Mervel says:
    August 1, 2011 at 6:29 pm

    But medicare payments are going to be cut in the future not expanded. The whole point of health care reform was that we would not need to pay as much for any of these services. Fundamentally why does it cost so much to run a nursing home? (not this one in particular but all of them?)

    A huge portion of medicare is not paying for the actual health treatments of older people with cancer, or hear disease or joint problems etc, it is going directly to nursing homes to house people.

    I think this is a very good grass roots example of exactly what is wrong with our medical system, we can’t afford medicare right now yet medicare is not enough to run these very basic nursing homes, so what happens when medicare is cut next year?

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