LTC Bullet: U.S. President Debates Center President
Wednesday March 3,
1999
Seattle--
The February 1999
issue of McKnight's Long-Term Care News contains a point/ counterpoint
column entitled "Endorse the White House LTC Plan?" In this article, U.S.
President Bill Clinton makes the case for his new four-point long-term
care plan. Center for Long-Term Care Financing President Stephen Moses
presents the counter argument. Excerpts from both positions follow.
President Clinton:
"Long-term care is a
complicated challenge that requires a range of responses. To improve
long-term care in America, we propose to do four things:
“First, to provide a
long-term care tax credit -- $1,000 for people with long-term care needs
or for the families that shelter them.....
“Second, we should
create a family caregiver support program -- a new national network to
support people caring for older Americans....
“Third, we must
educate Medicare beneficiaries about long-term care options....
“Fourth, I am
proposing that the federal government, as the nation's largest employer,
use its market leverage to set an example, offering private long-term care
insurance to federal employees....
“The senior boom is
one of the central challenges of the coming century.... We must do
everything in our power, not only to lift the quality of life and the
security of the aged and disabled, but to make sure that we do not impose
that intolerable burden on our children."
Stephen Moses:
"What if you needed a
root canal, but your dentist offered painkillers instead? You'd feel
better for a while, but sooner or later you would writhe in agony, lose
the tooth and blame the dentist.
"President Clinton's
new long-term care plan is like that: great short-term politics, but
terrible long-term public policy.
"The new Clinton plan
would add $1.24 billion per year to an already burgeoning government
investment in long-term care. From 1990 to 1997, the bill to taxpayers for
home health and nursing home care shot up from $31billion to $69
billion--an increase of 123%. In the same period, private out-of-pocket
costs for the same services edged up from $26 billion to $33 billion--an
increase of only 27%.
"As public financing
of long-term care increases and private spending decreases, the sense of
urgency people feel about the need to plan early and insure fully for the
risk of long-term care goes down.
"We can find a far
better way to meet the long-term care financing challenge.
"The best strategy is
to provide a fully collateralized, government-backed line of credit on the
estates of all Americans who need long-term care.
"That would empower
them to purchase red-carpet access to top-quality home care, assisted
living and nursing home care in the private marketplace.
"The fact that they
would have to pay this loan back out of their estates and inheritances
would strongly encourage new generations of the aging and their heirs to
plan ahead for long-term care and purchase private insurance while they
are still young, healthy and affluent enough to afford it.
"Getting middle class
people to take responsibility for themselves in this way would relieve the
burden on Medicare and Medicaid programs to provide home health and
nursing home care to both the needy and the middle class."
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