🌎 Resumen en español · traducción automática
Familias y defensores comunitarios pidieron a los líderes de Kentucky que reviertan los cortes presupuestarios que amenazan con cerrar la Clínica de Especialidades Lee en Louisville, la única en el estado que ofrece servicios médicos, dentales, conductuales y terapéuticos para adultos con discapacidades intelectuales y del desarrollo. La clínica ha despedido a más de 1,000 pacientes y perdido el 83% de su personal debido a los recortes de financiamiento, mientras que padres y defensores acusan que ambos lados del gobierno están jugando política con sus vidas. El gobernador Andy Beshear anunció los cortes a programas de servicios sociales en junio, culpando al presupuesto estatal bienal aprobado por la Asamblea General, aunque la legislatura argumenta que proporcionó financiamiento suficiente.
Traducción y resumen generados por IA a partir del artículo en inglés. Puede contener errores; consulte el texto original.
FRANKFORT — For more than an hour on Wednesday, parents and community advocates pleaded with Kentucky leaders to reverse budget cuts that threaten to shutter Lee Specialty Clinic in Louisville.
In three-minute testimony increments, more than a dozen said their loved ones with disabilities have nowhere else to turn, begging the members of the the Medicaid Oversight and Advisory Board to intervene. The board consists of elected lawmakers, members of the Cabinet for Health and Family Services and others.
They filled the annex room and four overflow rooms. Many wore yellow shirts that said “SaveLeeClinic.org.” Many cried as they spoke about the specialized needs they and their loved ones have — and how losing the only clinic to meet those needs would severely damage their quality of life.
Lee Specialty Clinic in Louisville has discharged more than 1,000 patients and lost 83% of its staff because of funding cuts, it says. The clinic is the only one like it in Kentucky, offering medical, dental, behavioral, and therapeutic services for adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities.
KY gov announces foster care, Medicaid reimbursement, other program cuts
Gov. Andy Beshear first announced cuts to several social service programs in early June, blaming the two-year state budget passed by the General Assembly this year, which he said underfunded the programs. The legislature has said it gave the executive branch sufficient funding and that the cuts were unnecessary.
Parents and advocates who spoke before the board on Wednesday said both sides are playing politics with their lives.
“Why are we, this community, being punished with the loss of the only specialized care facility that we have in Kentucky? Why are we a pawn in this political game between the executive and the legislature executed by the cabinet? Why is that?” asked Bill Kenealy, the president of the board of the Council on Developmental Disabilities and the parent of a Lee Clinic client. “Why do we bear the human cost? Why are we the losers? Why do we have to pay for poor or even no treatment?”
He said the closure of the clinic would amount to “malpractice” and be a “catastrophe” for the families who need it.
“If this clinic closes, we will follow what happens to the patients,” he said. “We will let the people of Kentucky know what happened to them.”
‘He is a person:’ The families’ stories
Some who testified said the medical staff at Lee Specialty Clinic were able to diagnose their children when no one else could. Others described an environment where they can show up and be understood.
They warned without that specialized care, Kentuckians who need it would turn to emergency rooms for primary care. In addition to ensuring it’s fully funded, several said it needs to be expanded.
Starr Garcia, the chair for the National Council for Autism and the mother of a teenager who needs specialized care. He turns 18 on Friday, she said.
“My fear is not that services will become hard to find, but that they’re going to disappear altogether,” Garcia said. “Families like mine, we’re not asking for special treatment. We are only asking for the opportunity to keep our children safe and at home and healthy. I love my son. We all love our children, right? I’m here because families like mine, we’re exhausted, we’re overwhelmed, but we’re still showing up. We need our policy makers…to show up too. My son is not a budget line item. He is a person, and his life is worth protecting.”
Kimberly Thompson, whose 29-year-old son finally got a diagnosis this year at Lee Speciality Clinic, pleaded with all parties to “work together to find a solution.”
“I encourage both the legislature and the governor’s office (and) the cabinet: please do not put us or pin us as political pawns in any kind of game about funding the clinic,” Thompson said. “For some reason a ball got dropped, and for some reason the patients became the ball in whatever game was going on. I just ask that it stop. This is not a political issue. I have my politics, we all do. Okay? That’s not what this is about. This is really about human lives.”
Scott Brinkman, a former Republican lawmaker and father of a Lee Clinic patient, said finding autism and behavioral care for his son in Jefferson County was a “very arduous and frustrating process.” His son became a patient at the clinic in 2015, a year after it opened, Brinkman said.
“As a parent of a child being served by the clinic — served exceedingly well — I’m asking the cabinet to reconsider its decision,” he said. “If this were to occur, it’s going to be very, very hard to reconstitute the operations of the clinic. It will not happen overnight. It will take a long period of time. In the meantime, these 1,300 individuals and families are going to suffer severe hardship …. hardships that they don’t deserve to experience. They all experience enough hardship in their daily lives as it is.”
The politics
Rep. Ken Fleming, a Louisville Republican who cochairs the Medicaid Oversight and Advisory Board, thanked the families throughout the testimonies for sharing their stories.
In the beginning of the meeting, he addressed the crowd: “Thank you very much for your strong, strong support and showing for Lee Specialty Clinic,” he said. “It’s very, very important to the General Assembly that … we try to find, get the funding for you all, and that’s a very strong priority for us.”
Later, near adjournment, he pointed the families to the Beshear administration, saying “The operating contract for Lee Specialty Clinic to provide services has been eliminated by the administration. The services are still required covered benefits under the Kentucky Medicaid program, and the General Assembly increased funding of these Medicaid benefits in the budget. What we have not heard (is) if there is a plan to continue to provide access to these services from the administration. So I ask a question to you to ask the question of the administration: ‘what is their plan?’”
Dr. Steven Stack, a member of the committee and the Cabinet for Health and Family Services Secretary, attempted to respond but Fleming initially overruled him, saying the meeting was over.
Sen. Karen Berg, D-Louisville, who is also a member of the board, cried out, “No way. He gets to respond. This is not political. This is real.”
The crowd applauded that. Fleming then spoke directly to Stack, saying, “Dr. Stack, you have made political statements. You have blamed the General Assembly. The governor has gone through the process. You all have made your position known — quite known.”
Several people in the crowd then demanded Stack be able to speak: “We haven’t heard it!” someone cried, and another: “Let the people hear it!”
Fleming then allowed Stack three minutes to speak, which he used to reiterate what Beshear has said: “The budget that was passed did not contain enough resources to do all the things the cabinet does.”
“I don’t believe for a minute that members of the General Assembly or the executive branch intended to make the families and their loved ones political pawns in any game,” Stack said. “Choices and decisions have consequences, but here decisions have to be made when there are consequences that don’t make sense to the masses.”
In a statement after the meeting, House Speaker David Osborne, R-Prospect, said the legislature is “equally frustrated about the administration is moving in this direction, but are hopeful that we will hear within the next few days that they will use the money provided to continue contracting with Lee, as well as avoid provider reimbursement rate cuts and cuts to other essential services.”
“Today lawmakers heard from families who face the heartbreaking news that their lifeline is in danger not because the legislature did not provide for it, but rather because the Governor has chosen not to prioritize essential programs,” Osborne said.
After his initial budget cut announcement, Beshear shifted some funds around to keep foster care payments at their current level and prop up Temporary Assistance for Needy Families funds. (Foster care families get paid based on the type and level of care they provide. Families caring for medically complex children, for example, get between $47 and $57 per day, according to a spokeswoman for the Cabinet for Health and Family Services, while a family providing basic care for a child 11 and younger will see closer to $30 per day).
And in a Tuesday op-ed, Beshear said he was actively “working on a plan to save the Lee Specialty Clinic” but “at best, it will be a Band-Aid to slow the bleeding from the failures in the budget.”
“Republican leadership now says I have ‘flexibility’ to move money and protect essential services as they decry the very cuts they’ve caused,” Beshear wrote. “But if you’ve underfunded everything by over a billion dollars, there’s not the money to move without starving another essential service.”
House Democrats, meanwhile, sent a letter to Osborne on Tuesday asking for leadership support in reallocating $14 million from Capitol Annex renovation to Lee Specialty Clinic.
“While maintaining state facilities is important, no reasonable person can conclude that renovating government office space is more urgent than ensuring vulnerable Kentuckians have access to healthcare,” Democrats wrote. “The Annex renovation can wait. The patients served by Lee Specialty Clinic cannot.”
Signers included Minority Caucus Chair Rep. Lindsey Burke, D-Lexington,Minority Floor Leader Rep. Pamela Stevenson, D-Lousiville, and Minority Whip Rep. Joshua Watkins, D-Louisville.
During Wednesday’s committee meeting, Corey Nett, who has cerebral palsy, pointed to Kentucky’s rainy day fund while asking for more money to help save Lee. (Nett testified with help from a friend, who read his written statement aloud). He called the current budget “morally bankrupt.”
“There are thousands of people’s lives at stake here,” Nett said. “And if this isn’t fixed, we’re showing the country and the world that in Kentucky, people with disabilities are expendable.”