The state House of Representatives voted Monday to override Gov. Charlie Baker’s veto of $4 million for rate increases in the senior care programs. The Senate was also taking up the overrides before today’s ending of the legislative session.
The overridden vetoes, of $2 million for adult foster care and $2 million for adult day-care programs, were among $49 million slashed Friday from the $41.7 billion budget.
Baker noted in his veto document that the two MassCare senior health budget items were “consistent” with his earlier budget recommendation, according to the governor’s listing.
“We haven’t had rate increases since 2012, and those increases were based on costs in 2009, so we are a little behind,” said Elaine T. Fluet, president and chief executive officer of GVNA Health Care programs programs in Greenfield and Athol.
The $2 million that was included in the Legislature’s budget after Baker failed to include it in his original budget, “is not even getting us where we need to be, but it’s something,” said Fluet, explaining that the program operators had been asking for more than that for years. “The costs of delivering services has increased and increased, and changes to regulations have increased our staffing requirements. A lot of the programs have closed over the last couple of years because their agencies can’t take the loss in what it takes to sustain them.”
The Greenfield adult “day program,” which provides nursing, nutrition and activities for seniors and providing respite for at-home caregivers, serves about 30 people.
Al Norman of Greenfield, former executive director of the advocacy group Mass Home Care, criticized Baker’s cuts to programs that he said run counter to Massachusetts helping keep seniors in their homes and out of institutions.
“I’m amazed the governor would veto them, and that they weren’t in his original budget,” said Norman, whose successor at the advocacy agency could not be reached for comment. “We hear rhetoric about Massachusetts being an age-friendly state, where we’re shifting more people from institutions into the community. So this is totally inconsistent, and shortsighted.”
Also overridden by the House were vetoes including $100,000 for rehabilitation of the Leverett Crafts and Arts building, $100,000 for Friends of Leverett Pond to repair, design, permit and construct a dam at Leverett Pond, and $50,000 for the Athol-based North Quabbin Community Coalition’s school-based health program.
Similar to adult day care programs, adult family care programs — like the one run by LifePath in Franklin County — haven’t seen increases for years, Norman said.
The family-care programs pay caregivers to look after participants — both seniors and those with disabilities — round-the-clock care in the home, thereby remaining in the community with a host family rather than in a nursing home or other institutional setting.
LifePath’s adult family care program, which serves about 150 people, “is one of the more cost-effective programs out there,” said LifePath Executive Director Barbara Bodzin. But without the raise, she said, what the state has been paying has made the service “cost prohibitive to providers.”
Bodzin added, “It’s a wonderful model, provided in a home environment. You couldn’t ask for better service delivery.”