Paying for nursing home care is tough. It’s not cheap — the average cost of a nursing home stay in Maine per day is $244-270, which adds up very quickly. An average for a year’s stay in a skilled nursing facility is $91,250.

Medicare doesn’t cover nursing home care unless the patient is sent directly from the hospital, and then only pays for up to 20 days of care, skilled nursing care insurance is very expensive, and most Mainers don’t have that kind of money, so most end up on MaineCare for nursing home coverage. Technically, what is supposed to happen is that the estate of the patient is attached for the cost of the care, but families often have trusts and other financial vehicles that legally impoverish seniors long (five years or longer) before they enter a nursing home, preserving the family home and other assets for the next generation.

In any case, the value of the family home would probably not be enough to cover the costs of the patient’s stay.

When you look at MaineCare’s cost share, a small percentage of the recipients end up using about 80 percent of the costs. Those include elderly nursing home patients and other very disabled people living in long-term residential care. MaineCare pays 68 percent of all nursing home costs for patients in Maine.

Two nursing homes closed this year, citing the inability to pay their bills because they were owed money by the state, but also, it should be noted, because they had a decided lack of patients. But it is true that the cost of caring for patients, especially those with dementia or other memory problems, is growing, and the cost the state is willing to recompense the homes has flatlined.

This year, Gov. Paul LePage wanted to take funds from the Fund for a Healthy Maine to put toward the nursing home debt, now about $30 million. Those funds came from the tobacco settlement, and are used to fund smoking cessation and other programs. In some ways, it might have made sense; the $5 million LePage wanted to strip from FHM would have been matched by $8 million from the federal government.

But in the end, the Legislature had decided to spend more than that — $14 million, which will draw down additional federal dollars, about $ 24 million over the next three years. LePage allowed that bill to become law without his signature.

Starting this month, $12 million additional dollars will begin flowing to the nursing homes, and an additional $13 million for the next two years. It’s still not enough, and the gap between what Medicaid pays and what the nursing homes need isn’t going to be closed. But it’s unfair and inaccurate to say that the Legislature is ignoring the elderly, as LePage said repeatedly this week.

LePage has also blasted leadership for refusing to call a special session to work out a deal for nursing homes, but has somehow failed to notice a deal has already been passed, been enacted, and is now sending money their way. It costs about $43,000 to bring all 186 lawmakers back for a special session of the Legislature for one day.

Not even all Republicans agree with the Governor on this, and Democrats are calling LePage’s sudden interest in the plight of the frail elderly “an election stunt.”

Yes, two nursing homes closed … in large part, because they didn’t have enough patients to remain viable. That speaks to a bigger issue about location of nursing facilities and the possibility of working with seniors and visiting nurses to keep people at home as long as possible. But that’s a subject for another Legislative session, and none of it can be done as a kneejerk reaction to a couple of rural business failures.