 LTC Bullet: What Have You Done for Me Lately? Friday, November 11, 2022 Seattle— LTC Comment: The Center for Long-Term Care Reform is a membership organization. Thank you for your support. Here’s an update on our recent LTC research and advocacy on your behalf, after the ***news.*** *** HONOR VETERANS TODAY ***
*** REGISTRATION IS NOW OPEN for the
2023 Intercompany Long Term Care Insurance Conference! Organizers report
“Our in-person conference will be March 12 - 15th at the Sheraton Downtown
Denver in Denver, CO. Our agenda includes over 45 educational sessions
with ample time for networking and reconnecting with colleagues. We still
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here to register and book your hotel. *** LTC BULLET: WHAT HAVE YOU DONE FOR ME LATELY? LTC Comment: Step one to solve a problem is to recognize you have one. For long-term care services and financing, we’re long past step one. Everyone recognizes America’s LTC system is broken. Step two is to define the problem. We have lots of published content on that as well. The Center for Long-Term Care Reform recently collaborated with the Paragon Health Institute to offer our definition: Long-Term Care: The Problem. Step three is to explain what caused the problem. It’s step three where we part company with most analysts. In the face of LTC’s many challenges, they throw up their analytical hands in despair and turn immediately to recommend more government spending, central planning and regulation to save the day. We argue that those “solutions” are actually what caused the problems in the first place. Doing more of what you’ve been doing and expecting a different result defines insanity. So, what caused LTC’s many dysfunctions? Here’s how we explained it in Long-Term Care: The Problem: Providing and funding long-term care (LTC) for the elderly is a large and growing challenge. Baby boomers start turning 85—the age at which health and LTC costs spike—in 2031, as Social Security and Medicare face insolvency. The government, mostly through Medicare and Medicaid, finances almost three-fourths of LTC expenditures (72.3 percent in 2020). Central planning, public funding, heavy regulation, and easy access to welfare benefits have caused most of LTC’s problems, such as nursing home bias, poor access and quality, inadequate revenue for care providers, caregiver shortages, and the terrible emotional and financial distress for caregiving families. Medicaid especially is responsible because, despite the conventional wisdom that it requires impoverishment, the program’s LTC benefits are routinely available not only to the poor but to the middle class and affluent as well. …
Access to publicly financed LTC [late in life] creates a moral hazard that discourages responsible LTC planning when people are still young, healthy, and affluent enough to save, invest, or insure for the risk. Policymakers should consider how public financing created and worsened LTC’s problems before proposing more of the same to address those problems. Step four to solve a problem is to eliminate its cause. For long-term care, that means removing the perverse incentives in Medicaid that have (1) discouraged early and responsible LTC planning and (2) rewarded ignorance and complacency about LTC risk and cost with windfall welfare benefits for patients and their families if and when catastrophic care costs occur. How to achieve the objective of retargeting Medicaid to the genuinely needy and persuading everyone else to plan early to save, invest or insure for LTC is the subject of our forthcoming paper, again with the Paragon Health Institute, titled “Long-Term Care: The Solution.” Watch for it in the new year. What else have we been up to at the Center for Long-Term Care Reform? Today’s LTC Bullet is our 1,346th. They’re all archived chronologically and by topic here. Check them out. So far this year, we’ve published 34 LTC E-Alerts, our weekly collection (for all members) of our daily LTC Clippings (for premium members). In the Clippings and the LTC E-Alerts, Steve Moses scans the news and research to keep members apprised of what they need to know to stay on the professional forefront. On November 1, AnneMarie Schieber of the Heartland Daily Podcast interviewed Center president Stephen Moses about “How Medicaid Compromised Long-Term Care”. She summarized: “In the interview, Moses discusses: 1. How easy is it to get Medicaid to pay for long-term care? 2. How has this compromised the quality of long-term care over the decades? 3. Who will need long term care? Can any of us live independently until we die? 4. Baby boomers…most are now 65…what kind of pressure will that put on long-term care and Medicaid in 10, 20, and 30 years from now? 5. What about counting on family members to care for you? How about covering your care with your own wealth and investments?” Click here to listen to this 20-minute podcast. On November 2, RealClearPolicy published Steve’s article “What’s Wrong With Long-Term Care.” He concluded: The only solution to this compendium of complications is to eliminate the moral hazard created when people can ignore the risk and cost of LTC until they need it and transfer the liability to taxpayers. To do that, we must: change Medicaid financial eligibility rules so they no longer desensitize the public to LTC risk and cost; front load the need to plan, save, invest or insure for LTC so most people deal with it when they’re still young, healthy and affluent enough to manage such financial decisions; and remove Medicaid as an eventual LTC safety net for people who fail to plan but retain wealth. Here are a few more of our published contributions to the long-term care conversation in the past year. “What works for long-term care and what doesn’t,” by Stephen A. Moses, McKnight’s Long-Term Care News, November 17, 2021 “Long Term Care Irony,” by Stephen A. Moses, Broker World, December 1, 2021 “The irony of long-term care advocacy,” by Stephen A. Moses, McKnight’s Long-Term Care News, December 17, 2021 “The Great Long-Term Care Compromise,” by Stephen A. Moses, Broker World, January 1, 2022 “Trappings of LTC system leave operators trapped,” by Stephen A. Moses, McKnight’s Long-Term Care News, February 23, 2022. “Long-Term Care Epiphany,” by Stephen A. Moses, Broker World, June 2022 “Long-term care’s mortal risk,” by Stephen A. Moses, McKnight’s LTC News, June 6, 2022 “LTC insurance sales suddenly surge,” by Stephen A. Moses, McKnight’s LTC News, August 10, 2022 Won’t you join us in the Center for Long-Term Care Reform’s noble mission to “ensure quality long-term care for all Americans?” To join, contact Damon at 206-283-7036 or damon@centerltc.com. Sign up online at http://www.centerltc.com/support/index.htm. With your help, we can do this! |