While the United States struggles to figure out how it is going to pay for long-term care, it is important for policymakers, care providers, and those of us caring for our parents to see how other countries do it. The Commonwealth Fund has just published my new paper, LongTerm Care Financing Reform: Lessons from the U.S. and Abroad that looks at where the [...]
If you think the U.S. is struggling over how to finance long-term care, just take a look at what's happening in the U.K. There, Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who faces an uphill battle for reelection this spring, has proposed to expand free long-term care to 280,000 of the most needy. His proposal has not only come under fire from the opposition conservatives, but also from many in [...]
A White House task force on meeting the needs of middle-class families today proposed to spend an additional $102 million to assist caregivers of aging relatives. The initiative includes an extra $52.5 million for respite care--a program enacted by Congress in 2006 but never fully funded. It is very important that the Obama Administration recognizes that caring for our parents is critical to many [...]
Republican Scott Brown's stunning victory in the Massachusetts Senate race has obviously turned the health reform debate on its head. Without a 60-vote majority in the Senate, Democrats are no longer assured of passing a major health bill. But what will this mean for long-term care reform? There are three key long-term supports and services issues at stake--expansion of Medicaid home and [...]
Why can't The Washington Post ever get it right when it comes to long-term care. Its latest self-embarrassment came with a piece it ran today comparing elder care in the U.S. with similar assistance in France and the U.K. According to the author, a psychologist named Sara Mansfield Taber, elderly women in England and France receive far better care than the writer's mother [...]
The CLASS Act, the proposed national long-term care insurance program, is included in the latest compromise health bill introduced today by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.). This version of the bill has now been endorsed by all 60 Senate Democrats, including several, such as Nebraska's Ben Nelson, who had previously vowed to oppose the health measure if it included CLASS. Another [...]
The politics of the CLASS Act, the proposed voluntary government long-term care insurance program, are getting nastier. Critics have taken to calling it a Ponzi scheme, comparing it to Bernie Madoff, and ripping it as a massive new unfunded government spending program. Senator Joe Lieberman (I-Conn) called it "a whole new entitlement program" which it certainly is not. I've raised concerns with CLASS [...]
The CLASS Act, a proposal to create a national long-term care insurance system, remains alive in the Senate health bill, but its fate remains far from certain. On Friday, the Senate actually voted 51-47 to drop the plan from its health bill. But, thanks to Senate rules that required 60 votes to approve the change, CLASS remains in the measure. Most troubling, [...]
The CLASS Act, the plan to create a national voluntary long-term care insurance program, is now included in both the House and Senate versions of health reform. So that means it will pass this year, right? Not so fast. There once was a time when provisions included in both the House and Senate versions of a bill were almost certain [...]
Pity the supporters of the CLASS Act, the proposal to create a national long-term care insurance system. They are on to an important idea, but they are caught between the proverbial rock and a hard place. Here's the problem: much of the congressional support for the CLASS Act is based on the Congressional Budget Office estimate that it will generate [...]