By Healthcare Facilities Today

An Indiana lawmaker said the recent failure of a construction moratorium could hurt existing nursing homes, according to an article on the News and Tribune website.

Rep. Ed Clere, R-New Albany, authored an update of the state’s Community and Home Options to Institutionalize Care for the Elderly and Disabled program. The bill originally included language that would have banned the construction of new nursing homes for two years, with exceptions for counties that had bed occupancy that exceeded 90 percent. 

That language was stripped from the bill in conference.

Clere said that while his support for the moratorium may seem anti-business, because the state and federal governments set the rate nursing homes are paid from Medicare and Medicaid, the nursing home market is not a free market, according to the article.

“Medicaid is not a profitable segment of the business, so the concern with construction of new facilities is the new facilities will offer amenities that older facilities can’t compete with and the new facilities will cherry pick the profitable segments of the business, leaving only the Medicaid business for the older facilities,” Clere said in the article. 

Read the article.