Policy Experts Agree: The U.S. System for Financing Long-Term Care is Crumbling

Excerpt from: Forbes (click for full article)

Patti's comment: "This is the real health care crisis in this country!!"

 

While the participants differed on specific solutions, most agreed on four key issues:

• The existing system for funding paid long-term supports and services is built on a wobbly three-legged stool: low private savings, an underfunded Medicaid program, and a hobbled private long-term care insurance market.
• The solution must include an affordable way for Americans to prefund their long-term care costs. This could include tapping financial assets or home equity, or buying insurance (either government, private, or some combination of both). Low-income people would require some form of safety net protection.
• Any future system should finance high-quality long-term supports and services that are well-integrated with medical care. This is especially important since recipients of care services suffer from chronic disease or injury that often requires complex medical interventions.
• There is currently no political consensus on how to do any of this.