Last year, the Minnesota Citizen's League asked me to help with a very ambitious project: The group wanted to find ways to improve our broken system of long-term care financing. Earlier this month, the non-profit, non-partisan League came up with its recommendations. I don't agree with them all, but among their far-reaching proposals are some ideas that I hope have legs. The League's white paper, [...]
Medicaid, which funds more long-term care supports and services than any other payer--$115 billion in 2008--is about to crash. Like a head-on train wreck, we can see it coming. The question is: What are we going to do about it? The Kaiser Family Foundation, in an extensive new survey of all 50 state Medicaid programs, tells the grim story. Medicaid is [...]
I spent yesterday with more than a hundred elder care professionals at the Seven Acres senior care campus in Houston. For a while they listened to me, but for much of the time I had the opportunity to listen to them. And what I heard was striking, and an important addition to the HSC Foundation's recently published study based on listening to family caregivers. We [...]
What do family caregivers want? What do they need? Education and training. Respite care. And, most important, peer support. Those are the conclusions of the HSC Foundation, which, along with several partners, organized a series of 2009 listening session to hear what caregivers had to say. They were not necessarily caregivers of parents or other frail elderly family members, Some were caring for wounded vets, others [...]
The Stanford University Center on Longevity has just released a trove of information on the health, living arrangements, and demographics of an aging America. The study, "New Realities of an Older America" tells the story of an independent, remarkably healthy population, but one that will present unique challenges as it lives well into its 80s and, eventually, reaches frail old age. For example, authors Adele Hayutin, [...]
In a Washington Times column yesterday, two Heritage Foundation researchers argued that the Community Living Assistance Services and Supports (CLASS) Act is a trillion dollar government bailout waiting to happen. The CLASS Act is a national voluntary long-term care insurance program that was included in the new health care law. And to listen to the authors, you'd think CLASS will [...]
Medicaid long-term care is well on its way to destroying state budgets, according to a new study by the international consulting firm Deloitte LLC. By 2030, according to estimates by the firm's Center for Health Solutions, Medicaid long-term care benefits for both home and nursing facility care will absorb a staggering 18 percent of total state budgets if current trends continue. Overall state [...]
Receiving personal care at home, as opposed to in a nursing facility or other institution, is not possible without two things: Somebody to provide the assistance and an appropriate place to live. A southern Virginia minister has come up with a possible solution to the second. MEDCottage is a portable, modular self-contained 24x12 dwelling that could be attached to the home [...]
Private long-term care insurance got a nice boost from a new study by the federal Department of Health and Human Services. The report, by the consulting firm LifePlans Inc, concluded that nearly 98 percent of those filing claims against their LTC policies received benefits, despite articles by The New York Times and others suggesting that claims denials are widespread. The study also [...]
A new model from the SCAN Foundation and the consulting firm Avalere Health concludes that premiums for a national voluntary long-term care insurance program similar to the newly-enacted CLASS Act would average about $115-a-month. The study concludes that a mandatory long-term care insurance program could provide identical benefits for one-third the cost, or about $40. Premiums would vary by the buyer's age and increase by inflation over time. The CLASS [...]