 LTC Bullet: Bridging LTC Silos (2) Friday, September 4, 2026 Seattle— LTC Comment: LTC providers and insurers communicate too little, hewing jealously to their professional bailiwicks. We try to narrow that gap after the ***news.*** *** LTC CLIPPINGS: Did you catch these stories this week? Our LTC Clippings subscribers received them in real time including Steve Moses’s always trenchant, often ironic, sometimes humorous, usually concise “LTC Comments.” To subscribe or for a free trial, contact Damon at 206-283-7036 or damon@centerltc.com. Examples follow: 9/3/2026, “Household Debt And Credit: Nearly half of Americans say carrying credit card debt Is ‘normal’ as U.S. balances reach $1.26 trillion,” Advisor Magazine Quote: “Credit card debt continues to play a significant role in household finances, as balances rose again in the second quarter and many consumers continue to carry revolving debt from month to month. According to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s latest Quarterly Report on Household Debt and Credit, credit card balances increased by $21 billion during the second quarter of 2026, reaching $1.26 trillion. Separate research from NerdWallet found that 49% of Americans say carrying revolving credit card debt is normal.” LTC Comment: Is it any wonder our national credit card carries over $40 trillion month to month when half the American public thinks doing the same with their personal finances is “normal”? ---------------------- 8/31/2026, “More than half of middle-class retirees plan to lean on family and friends for care,” by Donna Shryer, McKnights Senior Living Quote: “More than half of middle-class retirees (53%) plan to rely on family and friends if their health declines and they need help with daily activities or nursing care, according to the findings in a new report from the nonprofit Transamerica Center for Retirement Studies. … The savings picture helps explain the reliance on informal care. As of late 2025, middle-class Americans not yet retired had saved a median of $64,000 in total household retirement accounts — $82,000 among men and $49,000 among women.” LTC Comment: Unpaid family care already accounts for the largest portion of LTC in the U.S. That dependency on loved ones is likely to increase at a time when government help from Medicaid and Medicare is expected to decline. Got LTCI? ---------------------- 8/26/2026, “The Simplest Way to Plan for Long-Term-Care Expenses,” by Christine Benz, Morningstar Quote: “Statistics on long-term care can help inform the size of your long-term-care bucket. You’ll need to focus on two key items: the anticipated cost of whatever type of care you’d prefer to receive (in-home care or care in an institutional setting, for example) and the expected duration of that care. The Cost of Care Survey from Genworth/CareScout can help you benchmark the cost of care based on desired care type and your geography. For example, a Florida resident could expect to pay about $12,167 a month, or $146,000 a year, for a private room in a skilled nursing facility. … Regarding the duration of care, the typical long-term-care need—2.2 years for men and 3.7 years for women—is a starting point. But financial advisor and doctor Carolyn McClanahan cautions that those are averages and notes that healthy people are likely to have a longer care need; for very healthy clients, she benchmarks five years’ worth of long-term-care expenses. … And of course Medicaid is the largest payer of long-term-care costs in the US by a good distance. Because long-term care is so often related to dementia, those with tighter financial plans might think about using their long-term-care fund to cover the early years of long-term care, when cognitive abilities are apt to be higher, and turn to Medicaid-provided care later on if needed. That plan isn’t ideal, but at least it’s a plan.” LTC
Comment:
Saving for LTC is smart, whether using buckets or otherwise. But basing
any estimates on averages is a fool’s errand. Replacing the small risk
of a catastrophic financial loss with an affordable premium is the job
of private insurance. Medicaid should never be part of a “plan.” It is a
public welfare back up if and when planning, no matter how careful and
responsible, fails. LTC BULLET: BRIDGING LTC SILOS (2) LTC Comment: Have you noticed how little the people and companies responsible for providing long-term care (LTC) communicate with the people and companies responsible for funding LTC? You would think these two industries should have much to discuss. Nursing homes and home health agencies desperately need private-pay clients and revenue. LTC insurers struggle to attract buyers. But the two professions rarely work together. Both face a common problem. Medicaid pays LTC providers too little, often less than the cost of providing the care. Easy access to Medicaid when care is needed crowds out demand for private LTC insurance. Logically, LTC providers and insurers would unite and mobilize to advocate for policies that target Medicaid benefits to the neediest Americans and divert the well-to-do toward private financing, so that they pay economically sustainable market rates. The Center for Long-Term Care Reform has published dozens of national and state-level studies proposing policy solutions along those lines. See especially: “Long-Term Care: The Problem” and “Long-Term Care: The Solution” with the Paragon Health Institute. At the same time, we have placed articles and columns in trade journals and other publications intended to link the interests of LTC providers and insurers. Following are some examples from April 2026 through May 2024. We hope you’ll read some of them and that they will help tie together the interests and policies of LTC providers and insurers. Our major report titled “The LTC Triathlon: Long-Term Care's Race for Survival” from the year 2000 remains a good source on the same topic. NB: We published the first batch of 15 “Bridging LTC Silos” articles covering April 2024 through October 2021 in LTC Bullet: Bridging LTC Silos, May 1, 2026. Check those out too if you have the time.
|