Ohio's nursing-home lobby is pulling out all the stops to preserve the industry's unjustified privilege in Ohio's budget, even going so far as to claim that Grandma might die if lawmakers alter state support to nursing homes.

This emotional-blackmail strategy has worked on the General Assembly for decades, but it's time for lawmakers to call a halt to it. That's the only responsible thing to do when they're looking for ways to overcome a $3.2 billion deficit in the 2010-11 budget, which is supposed to take effect on Wednesday.

The Senate's version of the budget provided nursing homes with $13.7 billion over four years, $1.2 billion more than Gov. Ted Strickland had recommended in his plan. Plus, senators inserted an annual rate increase for nursing homes, starting in 2013 -- a guarantee enjoyed by no other provider of Medicaid services.

But when Strickland subsequently proposed cutting their funding back to his original $12.5 billion, the industry went ballistic. The Skilled Nursing Care Coalition, representing nursing homes, issued a press release yesterday that said Strickland's cuts will result in job losses and mass closures of facilities for "frail elderly and disabled Ohioans."

Not only that, but it would put nursing-home patients in danger of their lives, the coalition warned.

"The life-threatening consequences are real," Peter Van Runkle, executive director of the Ohio Health Care Association, was quoted in the release. "Transfer trauma studies show conclusively that when you take frail, physically and mentally debilitated people, uproot them from the environment and the care to which they're accustomed, and move them to a strange place that may be far away, there are negative outcomes, including death."

Apparently "transfer trauma" was not a consideration yesterday when nursing-home officials ignored blistering heat and humidity to bus frail patients -- along with their wheelchairs and oxygen tanks -- to the Statehouse from as far away as Wapakoneta, Oberlin and Cincinnati for a rally to protest the governor's proposal.

Compared with other states, Ohio proportionally spends much more on nursing-home care than it does on cheaper in-home and community-based care that seniors prefer. Ohio ranks 44th among the 50 states in the amount of Medicaid dollars it directs to in-home and community-based care.

Nursing homes are the least cost-effective option, averaging $56,000 a year, while in-home care costs about $12,000 a year.

It certainly hasn't hurt the nursing homes' cause that they are some of the biggest donors to lawmakers' campaign funds.

But nothing can be sacrosanct in this budget crisis. Preschool for 14,000 children, community health centers, county mental-health programs, social services for the poor and libraries all are facing massive cuts in state support. Nursing homes should enjoy no favored status.

Legislators should put an end their slavish submission to this industry.