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Yesterday, in his State of the State Address - TN Governor Phil Bredesen
appears to have seen the light:
Finally, I'd like to talk this evening though about a promise that I've made
and not yet kept-expanding alternatives to nursing homes for our elderly and
disabled residents, the so-called home and community based services. Tennessee
usually ranks dead last among the states in alternatives to nursing homes.
This is the year I want to fix that, this is the year I want to fulfill my
promise.
In the months ahead, with your help, we are going to fundamentally restructure
how long term care is handled in our TennCare program, and it will be a much
better and more humane program as a result. Eligibility is slow today; we are
going to speed it up. We need to make it easier to stay at home with more home
and community-based services. We need more residential alternatives to nursing
homes and we need more consumer-directed options such as allowing the consumer
to select or even employ his or her own caregivers.
These are not just goals, we will present you with the "Long Term Care
Community Choices Act of 2008" to restructure legislatively this part of
TennCare, and TennCare itself will be making changes in conjunction with this
to open the doors to a richer set of choices for our citizens.
We cannot of course put significant new dollars into long term care this year.
What we will do is to restructure what we have, and provide a framework for
the future in much the same way as we did with the BEP last year. We will not
do this independently, but in consultation with members of the legislature,
with the industry itself, and with citizens who have been calling for changes
in long term care for a long time.
There is a growth in my own personal understanding here. It becomes plainer to
me every day that our state has so many citizens who are elderly and who are
beginning to deal with the reality that they can no longer do everything for
themselves in quite the way they did twenty years ago. Our state is full of
the children and grandchildren of these citizens who want the best for them,
and are looking for ways to accomplish that.
And most personally, I know my mother is watching this proceeding tonight, and
she still hasn't stopped teaching me. I want to say to her, Mom,
I've seen how much you want to be in your own home;
I know how difficult that would have been a few times these past couple of
years without some help;
I know that not everyone has a granddaughter like you do who can give that
help.
My job is to open more doors to alternatives here in Tennessee. If you want to
stay in your home, if it makes sense to do so, this is the year we're going to
start making it easier.
from:
http://www.tennesseeanytime.org/governor/viewArticleContent.do?id=1170&page=0
NATIONAL ADAPT MAILING LIST - Adapt Community Choice Act List
http://www.adapt.org
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