Lawmakers told of plight of disabled, seniors in state

Tuesday, Oct. 29, 2002 | 8:58 a.m.

CARSON CITY -- Hundreds if not thousands of people with disabilities are not receiving appropriate services in Nevada, according to a state strategic plan released Monday.

"Nevada's entire system of services for people with disabilities is grossly under-funded," said the report presented to the Legislative Committee on Health Care.

The plan, along with similar studies on problems of senior citizens and health care in rural Nevada, were presented to the committee. Also outlined was a study for overhauling the rates paid by the state for health care for those citizens.

The 2001 Legislature allocated $800,000 to develop the studies to find out where Nevada was falling short and to present recommendations. The suggestions in the plans will cost millions of dollars.

State Human Resources Director Mike Willden said he will meet with Gov. Kenny Guinn Wednesday to brief him on the recommendations and to see what will be included in the 2003 budget.

Willden cautioned that all of the suggestions will not be able to be financed in one biennium but would have to be spread out of a series of years.

Tom Pierce, chairman of the department of special education at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and a member of the disability task force, outlined some of the points of the plan that estimated there were 375,000 people with disabilities in Nevada, of which 50,000 are children.

The report recommends more community services for this group.

"Many people who can live in the community are unnecessarily languishing in nursing facilities and other segregated setting and missing out on the many opportunities the community offers them," the report said.

"In nearly every component of community services, funding in Nevada falls far short of the needs of its citizens with disabilities. When compared with other states across the country in terms of both overall spending and per capital fiscal effort for community services, Nevada is either last or almost last in nearly every funding category."

There are more than 125 Nevadans with disabilities living out of state, and Pierce said that was "the wrong thing to do." Nevada must start its own programs to take care these people, Pierce said.

Susan Rhodes, chairwoman of the Senior Services Task Force, echoed some of the complaints about services for the elderly. She said 85 percent of senior citizens who are in publicly funded programs are in nursing homes. The goal is to reduce that to 60 percent. And she wants to lower the number of hospital visits of seniors by 15 percent.

Rhodes, asked by Sen. Ray Rawson, R-Las Vegas, about long-term care insurance for the seniors, said it's too expensive for many of the elderly to buy.

Rawson, who is chairman of the legislative committee, suggested the state might have to look at providing insurance to cover long-term care for seniors who retire from the state. He said that would amount to about $150 a year in added premiums that would be paid by both young and old state workers.

Rawson said 50 to 60 percent of the people can't afford the insurance to cover costs of a nursing home or other services provided in the community.

A goal of the senior task force is that by 2010, 290,000 Nevada elderly pay no more than 30 percent of their income for housing and utilities and that those enrolled in the state's low-cost prescription drug program be increased from 7,500 to 10,124.

Robin Keith, chairman of the Rural Health Task Force, said the major problem in rural counties is the lack of medical care.