(I posted this yesterday on my TaxVox blog, but those interested in long-term care may be interested as well) Long-term care insurance has been a model of market failure. The need for care in frail old age or disability seems to be the ideal insurable event. Two-thirds of those over 65 will need some assistance before they die and 20 percent will [...]
It was a good day for supporters of the CLASS Act, the national long-term care insurance program that has been on the edges of the health reform debate. A version of the measure was included in the House Democratic reform bill introduced today by Speaker Nancy Pelosi. The decison all but assures the long-term care proposal will be included in the [...]
I spent yesterday morning at a Kaiser Family Foundation panel discussion on the CLASS Act, the national long-term care insurance program being considered as part of health reform. The panelists, who included Senate Health Committee aide Connie Garner and a number of advocates for long-term care reform, were upbeat about the possibility that CLASS will be included in a final health [...]
The other day, long-term care insurance gadfly Stephen Moses called me "an advocate of more government financing and an enemy of private LTC financing alternatives." I assume he said this because I believe that reforms such as the CLASS Act, which would create a national long-term care insurance system, would be a far better way to pay for this assistance [...]
The House Energy & Commerce Committee has added Senator Ted Kennedy's national long-term care insurance proposal (the CLASS Act) to its version of health reform legislation. This is another remarkable step forward for the measure although, as I've noted before, the fate of this and other long-term care provisions won't be decided until Congress writes a final health care bill sometime this [...]
The Obama Administration has given a boost to Senator Ted Kennedy's national long-term care insurance program, the CLASS Act. In a July 6 letter to Kennedy, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sibelius said President Obama believes "it is appropriate to include the CLASS Act as part of health reform." Obama co-sponsored the bill when he was in the Senate, but [...]
I've begun writing a regular, bi-weekly column for Kaiser Health News, a new independent news service. This morning's column looks at how much CLASS Act premiums would cost. The bottom line; Monthly payments for a national long-term care insurance policy would be more than its backers hope, but would still be affordable for many middle-class buyers.
Supporters of Senator Ted Kennedy's CLASS Act, which would create a national long-term care insurance program, are bragging that the plan would produce $59 billion for the government over the next 10 years, money they say could help pay for health reform. As much as I like the ideas behind the CLASS Act, this claim is both misleading and counterproductive. It [...]
I participated in an interesting panel discussion on long-term care this afternoon at The Urban Institute . My fellow panelists were an impressive group of policy experts, all of whom have designed their own reform plans. They included Bill Galston from the Brookings Institution, Rich Johnson from The Urban Institute, and Anne Tumlinson from the consulting firm Avalere Health. While each approaches the problem from a [...]
The Democrats on the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee have, as I expected, included three key long-term care services proposals in their massive 615-page health reform bill. The measure would require states to offer the same access to home and community care as they currently provide for skilled nursing facilities under Medicaid. It would provide new incentives for training both paid [...]