Bill makes accessing Medicaid help easier Resource center gives care options  BY CHRIS GARDNER  REPUBLICAN-AMERICAN   SOUTHBURY — Elderly people and their families soon will have a place to get information about Medicaid benefits for themselves and relatives. Gov. M. Jodi Rell has signed a bill that sets aside $1 million to create an Age and Disability Resource Center, a clearinghouse where anyone in Connecticut can get clear and accurate information about their benefits and care options. Sponsored by Rep. Arthur J. O’Neill, R-Southbury, the bill was the brainchild of Joseph Stango of Southbury, who successfully lobbied for a program that allows nursing home residents to return home and not lose financial aid. The program, called Money Follows the Person, will bring the state $24.2 million in federal support to help residents with the transition to home care. It will allow 700 people to receive home care over five years. A separate bill introduced by O’Neill would have expanded the program to serve more people, but it was not considered. Stango said he will ask O’Neill to resubmit the bill next year.

Joseph Stango began pushing for a change in the law so he could help care for his mother.

Stango is elated lawmakers and Rell agreed to finance the resource center so people can get information about their Medicaid benefits. Before there was no one source to go to. “What you ultimately ended up doing was pulling pieces of information together based on conversations you had with an attorney and agencies like the VNA,” Stango said. “As a family member, as an elderly person, it’s very difficult to get a view.”
 

The resource center likely will be up and running by fall. It will give people three ways to access information:
 

• It will establish a three-digit hot line number that will have live operators to answer questions.
• It will create a Web site to access Medicaid benefits.
• It will put benefits counselors at Area Agencies on Aging who can take a person’s information, punch it into a computer, and get back a description of benefits the person is eligible for.
  

“I think it’s a good idea for people to be more aware of what’s available,” O’Neill said. “There are a lot of different things that are out there that can help people, but unless you are connected to the system or know someone who is, it’s hard to figure it all out.”
  O’Neill said he had trouble finding out about services available to his mother when she was sick. “It was kind of confusing to me, and I had the advantage of being a legislator and having some familiarity with the system,” he said.Stango said O’Neill is just the type of person the resource cen­ter will be able to help. “It’s a point of entry,” he said. He began to lobby for change in elder care laws when he realized how prohibitively expensive it would be to have his mother, Dora, come live with him. Before Money Follows the Person was signed into law, Medicaid would not pay for in­home care. Stango has said his mother receives excellent care at the River Glen Health Care Center in Southbury, but she would rather live at his home, where he has set up a room for her.

The Department of Social Services has said caring for people in their homes will save the state money in the long run, estimating in-home care on average costs about half as much as nursing home care.

Stango believes people should be able to choose whether to be cared for at home or at a nursing home. He said Connecticut has taken the first step toward becoming a “full choice state” like Oregon and Vermont, and that the Age and Disability Resource Center will be a good support system.
“If you’re going toward full choice, you need to know what benefits you are eligible for so that you can make an informed and logical decision about what you want to do,” he said.