Excerpt from: Health Policy Forum (click for full article)
The fact is that roughly 70 percent of Americans over the age of 65 will need some form of long-term care, on average for three years. Yet most people, when asked, think they will never need this kind of care. To make matters even worse, many individuals mistakenly believe that Medicare will pay for long-term services and supports even (it does not). The result is a public that is woefully underprepared and ill-equipped to prepare for what are probably inevitable health needs.
This gap in knowledge and awareness has contributed to our current “non-system” of financing long-term care, in which people are left to fend for themselves to pay for services or spend down to near poverty levels to qualify for Medicaid; for only then is public help available. This is neither a sustainable nor a dignified policy. We need to develop a better model that will ensure that all Americans can age with dignity, choice, and independence. But what would that look like? As a physician, I believe we have perfected the health care delivery model for 1972. What we need today and into the future is an updated toolbox for financing long-term care that serves the needs of a 2013 population. In 1965, the average life expectancy was 69 years old. If an older person experienced a major health event—a heart attack or stroke, for example—they might have recovered, but they probably did not live much longer beyond that event. Today, with advances in medicine and technology and the increased number of intensive care units and critical care units, people are living longer than ever before, but with functional impairments and multiple chronic conditions. The delivery model we have today is not designed to meet these growing care needs, and the financial strains on individuals and families are significant.
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