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Article: As Residents Get Older and Sicker, Nursing Homes Face Cost Squeeze Series: AN UNCERTAIN OLD AGE; THE ELDERLY AND MEDICAID Series Number: 2/3
- Article from:
- The Washington Post
- Article date:
- May 29, 1995
- Author:
CopyrightThis material is published under license from the Washington Post. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Washington Post. (Hide copyright information)
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The ladies of Murray Manor, the wives of the men who worked in the
steel mills of nearby Pittsburgh, have gathered for lunch.
Just over a dozen of them will eat this morning by feeding tube.
Of the others, many will be fed, spoonful by spoonful, by a nurse's
aide, because three-quarters of the residents of Murray Manor are
unable to perform even routine tasks without assistance. And at the
end of the meal, most will have their bills for the food and the
nurses who fed them and just about everything else in this $110-a-
day nursing home picked up by the government's Medicaid program.
Medicaid, among the largest federal entitlements expected to go
under the knife, is popularly thought to be ...