House OKs Ban on Evictions of Medicaid Aged

The House on Wednesday overwhelmingly approved a bill to prevent nursing homes from evicting destitute elderly residents covered by Medicaid to make way for patients who can afford higher charges.

The bill was sponsored by Florida lawmakers after a Tampa, Fla., nursing home last year tried to kick out 53 Medicaid patients when it decided to stop participating in the federal heath care program for indigent patients.

The measure, passed 398 to 12, has strong backing in the Senate, and supporters say Congress could complete work on it by late this week and send it to President Clinton for his signature.

The bill protects Medicaid patients from being evicted if a nursing home decides to withdraw from Medicaid. Many elderly nursing home patients exhaust their assets and end up relying on Medicaid for their long-term care, making them less profitable for the homes than higher-paying privately insured patients.

Under this bill, nursing homes could not evict current patients, but if the homes voluntarily withdraw from Medicaid they would have the right to warn incoming private-paying residents that they might have to move if they use up their funds and become Medicaid beneficiaries.

In the Tampa case, Vencor Inc. was fined $260,000 by state regulators for evicting the 53 Medicaid residents.

The company had said the discharges were necessary so it could renovate the facility. In addition, Vencor attacked what it said were flaws in Medicaid, saying they made it uneconomical to house Medicaid recipients. The company said it has since readmitted the evicted residents in Tampa.

Annually, about 58 nursing homes have withdrawn from the Medicaid program over the last three years, according to the Health Care Financing Administration. Medicaid residents have been evicted from nursing homes in at least nine states because the institutions opted out of Medicaid entirely.