Cuts in health care and human services are likely to be part of any solution to the state budget crisis. But as the Star Tribune points out, Minnesotans with disabilities are already coping with previous cuts to personal care services. Those cuts were enacted a couple years ago after after a legislative audit revealed some instances of fraudulent billing in the personal care attendant program. The actual incidence of PCA fraud was relatively low, but it was enough to get the attention of both the media and legislators. Now, the Republican-controlled Legislature is promising to closely examine the budget allocation of every state-funded service.
The PCA program is one of the bigger pieces of the human services budget pie, which makes it a ripe target for budget hawks. It’s not clear, however, that PCA services can be cut further without seriously jeopardizing the health and independence of people with disabilities. The disability community in Minnesota is more politically active than in most states, but I’m not sure how receptive legislators will be to their advocacy efforts. Stories like the one in the Strib undoubtedly help put a human face on the abstract talk of public finances and I expect to see more of this in the coming months. Still, I will be quite surprised if PCA services (and the private duty nursing services I use) emerge untouched in the coming budget battle.
my daughter and son in law are both disable and i am a pca the cuts are still coming every week there are new ones i wory about the ones with out any help to help them move through all the red tape why when ever the money is tight they always take from the disable and the old they live on so little and try so hard to be indepentant and they just keep knocking them down