Medicaid pays for 60 percent of people in nursing homes (and that includes people in Newburyport).

“..his (Paul Ryan’s) budget would impose immediate cuts to Medicaid, the health-care program for the poor that funds nursing-home care and other benefits for 6 million U.S. seniors.”  – Bloomberg Businessweek,  Brian Faller, August 14, 2012

“Among the victims someone’s grandparents who, without Medicaid, won’t be able to afford nursing home care…  Many are poor children. Some are middle-class families who have children with autism or Downs syndrome. Some are kids with disabilities so severe that they require 24-hour care. These are the people who count on Medicaid.”   The Wall Street Journal, Aug 17, 2012

So if your spouse, parents or  grandparents are in a nursing home, and their care is paid for by Medicaid, and Paul Ryan and Mitt Romney get elected, they plan on cutting Medicaid ASAP.  And what happens to Middle Class families? It would look as if they would be faced with the draconian choice of letting their loved one not be cared for, or quitting a job to provide full-time care.  What does that do to the finances of the Middle Class, it would throw them into chaos, which is what one of the things that Medicaid (and as a btw… under President Reagan, Medicaid legislation was passed so that spouses would not go bankrupted – Reagan’s spousal safety net) is meant to prevent, here in Newburyport, locally, and all across America.