Later this year, Rep. Tom Suozzi (D-NY) will reintroduce his public catastrophic long-term care insurance bill, called the WISH Act. Suozzi is doing all the right things: Looking for Republican support and trying to engage the private insurance industry, long-term care providers, and employers, as well as advocates for older adults and people with disabilities. But he has a big [...]
Washington voters will decide the fate of the state’s path-breaking public long-term care insurance program in a referendum this Fall. If adopted, Initiative 2124 would make participation in the Washington Cares program voluntary, effectively killing it. The effort, largely bankrolled by hedge fund manager Brian Heywood and backed by prominent state Republicans, is the latest attempt by conservatives to dismantle [...]
California’s evolving effort to build a public long-term care insurance program includes an important, and potentially far-reaching, feature: The insurance fund would be allowed to invest some assets in stocks. This would be a dramatic change for both social insurance and long-term care insurance. For example, Social Security is allowed to invest only in Treasury bonds. Regulators require private long-term [...]
The federal government has suspended for two years its sale of long-term care insurance policies to its employees. Some industry experts question whether the program ever will return in its current form. The long-running initiative, called the Federal Long Term Care Insurance Program (FLTCIP), was halted when John Hancock Life & Health Insurance Company, the carrier that operated the program, [...]
Facing a lawsuit and political opposition, Washington State Governor Jay Inslee has delayed until April a payroll tax aimed at funding the state’s first-in-the-nation public long-term care insurance program. Inslee said the delay will give the legislature time to address what he called “areas that need adjustment.” A state long-term care commission advising the legislature and governor will recommend a [...]
When Washington State legislators approved a public long-term care (LTC) insurance program in 2019, they made a last-minute change: Residents could opt out if they purchased private LTC coverage by Nov 1, 2021. Those who remained would pay an annual payroll tax surcharge of 0.58 percent starting next year and, in return, be eligible for a public LTC insurance benefit [...]
Two years ago, the Trump Administration quietly began a review of the nation’s long-term care (LTC) insurance system, focused primarily on ways to enhance private coverage. This week, just as quietly, an administration task force released its report. Unfortunately, for the most part, the group was unwilling to commit to any meaningful changes to a badly broken system. It made [...]
Americans bought only about 60,000 stand-alone long-term care (LTC) insurance policies in 2018, down 13 percent from 2017. Only about 15 carriers were actively selling policies, and five of them accounted for more than three-quarters of the market, as measured by premiums. The grim news was included in the latest version of an authoritative annual survey of long-term care insurance [...]
House Ways & Means Committee Chair Richard Neal (D-MA) is mulling a plan to add a limited long-term care benefit to Medicare Supplement (Medigap) insurance. Minnesota proposed a similar plan last year. And the idea would expand to traditional Medicare a recent innovation that added limited supports and services to Medicare Advantage managed care plans. Neal is the second key [...]
The Trump Administration is (very quietly) looking at ways to reinvigorate the flagging private long-term care (LTC) insurance market. The recommendations are expected to surface later this year. And they likely will be very modest. The ideas being considered would make some regulatory changes and create new tax subsidies to encourage consumers to purchase private LTC insurance. They would send [...]