By Susan Jaffe | KAISER HEALTH NEWS | July 31, 2017 |This story also ran in 
Ten years ago, a driver ran a stop sign as Jim McIlroy rode into the intersection on his motorcycle. Serious injuries left McIlroy paralyzed from the chest down. But, after spending some time in a nursing home, he returned to his home near Bethel, Maine.
McIlroy does most of his own cooking since Maine’s Medicaid program paid for a stovetop that he can roll his wheelchair underneath to reach the food-prep area. His
Esther Ellis received a new mattress earlier this year from Partners in Care, a nonprofit that runs four of the dozens of sites in California’s Multipurpose Senior Services Program, a Medicaid-funded home services program. (Heidi de Marco/KHN)
new kitchen sink has the same feature. Wheelchair-friendly wood flooring has replaced McIlroy’s wall-to-wall carpeting.
The alterations plus a personal care aide — all paid for by Medicaid — enable McIlroy to stay in his house that he and his wife, who has since died, “worked really hard to own,” he said. The arrangement also saves Medicaid roughly two-thirds of what it would cost if he lived in a nursing home.
McIlroy depends on the federal-state program’s growing support of home-based care services — along with 2 million elderly or disabled Americans who rely on them to live at home for as long as possible.
However, that crucial help could face severe cuts if congressional Republicans eventually succeed in their push to sharply reduce federal Medicaid funds to states. [Continued at Kaiser Health News and USA Today]
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