Hiking the state’s minimum wage to $15 without adjusting Medicaid payments will have a devastating impact on Connecticut skilled care facilities, providers have claimed.
LeadingAge Connecticut estimates that its 35 members will need to pay an additional $9 million in wages in benefits if that occurs.
“I fear that our nursing home is now at a critical juncture,” Thomas Russo, executive director of Kimberly Hall South in Windsor, CT, wrote to state lawmakers. “We are clearly at a point where we can’t go another year without Connecticut policymakers recognizing that substantial Medicaid help is overdue.”
State legislators are mulling whether to boost minimum pay to $15, up from $10.10. At the same time, Gov. Ned Lamont (D) and lawmakers’ budget proposals for the next two years have not included increases to Medicaid reimbursement rates, the CT Mirror reported Monday. That lack of Medicaid support and stagnant wages have been the source of ongoing strike threats from the thousands of nursing home workers.
Lamont’s plans would increase the minimum wage to $15 by 2023 while legislators have suggested a 2022 increase. Connecticut is also grappling with major budget deficits, with spending set to exceed revenues by $1.7 billion in 2020. Rep. Gail Lavielle (R-Wilton) said the state simply cannot afford any Medicaid rate increase and should forego wage hike mandates because of the potential harm to nursing homes.
“We aren’t going to be able to serve the people who need it. Everything is connected,” she said.
