Patti's Blog - Advocate for Elders, People with Disabilities and Their Families

Coming Soon to the USA: Extreme Makeover, Long-Term Care Edition

Excerpt from: Senior Housing News (click for full article)

 

As the demand for assistance with daily activities and long-term care for millions of Americans grows everyday, the question of who should provide long-term care solutions stands at a crossroad.

What happens when a home improvement project goes haywire? A professional from the private sector—not the government—is called in to fix your leaky faucet. However, the social and economic challenge is that the foundation for that assistance is beyond the reach of a vast majority of individuals.

Not so long ago, Congress made a formal repeal of the Community Living Assistance Services and Supports (CLASS) Act that was part of the Obama Administration’s Affordable Care Act. The Act was thrown off the cliff….the fiscal cliff as part of the legislation that passed earlier this year.

What You Need to Know About Long-Term Care Insurance

Excerpt from: U.S.News (click for full article)

 

Long-term care insurance may or may not be the right choice for you. But it remains the only protection against potentially devastating later-life health expenses should you or a loved one be unable to perform common activities such as eating, dressing yourself, using the bathroom, and other so-called "activities of daily living" (ADLs).

Without insurance, you have two choices for financial planning: fund your own expenses out of your personal assets, which amounts to self-insuring, or spend down most, if not all, of your assets and then qualify for Medicaid. With no intended slight to Medicaid, an invaluable program that helps millions of Americans, its level of benefits does not exactly support a Club Med user experience. (And, no, Medicare does not pay long-term care expenses.)

There was voluntary long-term care insurance included in Obamacare, known as the CLASS program. Although enacted into law, CLASS never got off the drawing board. Its structure—voluntary participation and modest benefits—would not have attracted many users, and those it did attract would have overwhelmingly been sicker and very likely to have long-term care (LTC) expenses. The recent tax bill compromise included the creation of yet another long-term care commission but there is no insurance alternative to private policies on the horizon.

A New Commission: Time to Cheer or Yawn?

Excerpt from: New York Times (click for full article)

 

The fate of the Class Act, which would have established the nation’s first voluntary public long-term care insurance program, was sealed in 2011 when the Obama administration shut it down, essentially calling it unworkable.

As long as the language remained part of the Affordable Care Act, supporters allowed themselves to hope, or perhaps fantasize, that the administration might return to the subject. How to care for an aging population, and who pays for that and how, are questions that won’t go away.

But Congress quietly administered the coup de grâce last month, during the fiscal cliff negotiations. The budget deal stripped the Class Act language from the Affordable Care Act. R.I.P.

Goldberg: Time to Help States Make Lemonade on Issue of Long-Term Care?

Excerpt from: Roll Call (click for full article)

 

The enactment of the American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012 averted the so-called fiscal cliff, but it also repealed the Community Living Assistance Services and Supports Act that was intended to create a public mechanism to help people pay for long-term services and supports if they become disabled.

The repeal was not a surprise. More than a year ago the administration abandoned plans to implement CLASS after it became clear that premiums for the program as designed — with participation to be voluntary rather than mandatory — would be too high to attract more than a tiny percentage of the population.

CLASS was flawed, but it was the first major effort in decades to provide an alternative to impoverishment and welfare for millions of working-age people who at some point will need long-term services and supports. With the decision to repeal CLASS rather than amend it, the nation has no viable strategy to help people finance their long-term care.

The realities of long-term care in America

Excerpt from: Columbia Journalism Review (click for full article)

 

Last week’s fiscal cliff deal hammered the last nail in the coffin of the CLASS Act, a part of president Obama’s health reform law that would have allowed Americans to begin prepaying for their long-term care. In reality, it was dead anyway when the Obama Administration determined the CLASS Act was not technically workable and announced in the fall of 2011that it would not go forward.

One of the program’s most useful contributions was the exploration of long-term care insurance as a solution. Scott Simon interviewed Robyn Stone, a long-term care expert who worked in the Clinton White House and is now executive director of the Leading Age: Center for Applied Research. The market for long-term care insurance has not grown substantially, Stone said. “It’s not a solution for all of us in the United States.”

Long-Term Care Sees “Trade-Off” Under Fiscal Cliff Deal, CLASS Canceled

Excerpt from: Senior Housing News (click for full article)

 

The first measure Congress has taken under its fiscal cliff deal is the repealing of the Community Living Assistance Services and Supports (CLASS) Act.

Part of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010, the CLASS Act was originally designed to provide a basic cash benefit to individuals who require long-term care. Since then, the program has been abandoned by the Obama Administration, writes a Forbes contributor.

Expensive premiums for buyers along with concerns regarding the program’s financial sustainability placed the CLASS Act under criticism by Republicans and it eventually lost Democratic support as well.

As a “trade-off” to the abandonment of the CLASS Act, the second measure under the deal describes the creation of a national long-term care commission.

Long-term care providers dodge bullets in fiscal cliff deal, but CLASS (Act) is out

Excerpt from: McKnight's (click for full article)

 

Long-term operators are cheering that Congress averted cutting Medicare payments through sequestration this week, and they're glad that another one-year postponement of physician pay cuts didn't come at their expense.

They also have reason to smile about the extension of the Medicare Part B therapy caps extension process and that Congress did not act to lower the ceiling on allowable bed taxes, or “provider assessments.” But they remained uneasy Tuesday because some of the issues could be up for renegotiation again as soon as next month, when new debt-ceiling legislation might be introduced.

"We are grateful that the House and Senate steered away from cuts to Medicare through the sequester,” said Mark Parkinson, president and CEO of the American Health Care Association/National Center for Assisted Living. “As we've shown throughout these negotiations, the long term and post-acute sectors stand at the brink of our own cliff, already reeling from deep cuts to Medicaid and Medicare throughout 2012.”