By Jaymie Baxley, NC Health News
Jennifer Shigley can’t speak or walk without assistance.
The 49-year-old also cannot feed or bathe herself. Her father, a retired child psychologist, described her as having the mental capacity of a toddler.
“She requires total care,” Hal Shigley said. “Thank goodness she is in a facility where she’s taken good care of.”
For eight years, Jennifer has lived at a group home operated by the Raleigh nonprofit TLC — formerly known as the Tammy Lynn Center — for adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Like other residents of the facility, her around-the-clock care is made possible by North Carolina’s Medicaid program.
“It’s very expensive to care for people like Jennifer and people who have similar disabilities,” said Hal Shigley, who estimated that the government-funded health insurance program pays “somewhere in the neighborhood” of $150,000 a year for his daughter to stay at TLC.
Jennifer’s benefits shouldn’t be affected by looming federal cuts to Medicaid because she’s in a special coverage category for people with profound intellectual and developmental disabilities.
But advocates are warning that the Trump administration’s proposals to slash Medicaid — a program where states and the federal government each shoulder part of the costs — by up to $2.3 trillion over the next decade could end up jeopardizing the kind of care she receives.