Healey curtails access to elder home care programs as caseloads surge in Massachusetts

fallriverreporter.com ^ | 01/30/2025 | Alison Kuznitz

[massmike]

Elder services providers grappling with surging caseloads and funding deficits are bracing for new state directives that will curtail access to home care programs.

The Healey administration on Feb. 1 plans to tighten eligibility criteria for older adults enrolling in the state-funded Enhanced Community Options Program (ECOP), which serves frail individuals who clinically qualify for nursing homes but are able to receive intensive at-home care. By the start of March, the state will then impose a cap on the number of available ECOP slots, providers told the News Service.

Older adults considered to have the lowest need would be unable to access basic home care services in the new fiscal year, and frail Bay Staters in the coming months may be forced to leave their homes and move into nursing facilities under the ECOP changes, providers say.

Under that policy proposal, older adults with fewer needs would no longer qualify for basic services, such as meal support or housekeeping, Crimmins said. Those individuals would need to rely on other support systems, such as a spouse or other family members who can provide help.

Adult children may also need to cut back on work or grapple with other disruptions as they struggle to care for their parents under the strain of scaled-back state services, said Roseann Martoccia, executive director of WestMass ElderCare, Inc.

“If people can’t receive enough services to safely remain at home, then families have to make — and that person has to make — tough choices about, ‘Can I live at home with less services?'” Martoccia said.

[lgjhn23]

Probably spent all their money on illegal aliens that don’t belong here....

[RoseofTexas]

Yep. Their next step…. euthanize the elderly. They rather keep the illegal invader criminals etc and spend trillions on them than to give the elderly their due. They are being sacrificed in order to keep the illegals and their power in tact. The movie Soylent Green comes to mind!

[lgjhn23]

“..Yep. Their next step…. euthanize the elderly. They rather keep the illegal invader criminals etc and spend trillions on them than to give the elderly their due. They are being sacrificed in order to keep the illegals and their power in tact. The movie Soylent Green comes to mind!...”

We call em: “MassHoles”. Extreme communist to their very core....

[ssfromla]

You damn well know they did.

Society is judged by God on how they treat the elderly and sick.

I am ashamed that I would have to point that out to der komisar.

It's a short path from neglect to selective euthanasia.

[lgjhn23]

“..It’s a short path from neglect to selective euthanasia...”
.
Exactly.
That’s basically what those 5 RAT communist governors did to those nursing home elderly during the COVID plandemnic. They literally murdered those innocent elderly people and wouldn’t even allow their loved ones in there while they died. Yet, here as of today, not a single solitary one of those evil, godless basstids has been held accountable for it...not one. The old saying: “the only good communist, is a dead communist” has never been proven to be truer than it is today...spit.

[hinckley buzzard]

These individuals “clinically qualify for nursing homes.” Take away home health care and increase residential nursing home populations. i’m pretty certain that a nursing home costs way more than home health care. This must be driven by nursing home corporations seeking business.

[Twotone]

Having taken care of my mother at home while on hospice, I can guarantee it is no easy task. But getting outside help is wildly expensive & the average family these days would certainly find it a hardship.

But it is a duty to take care of our sick & elderly.