“LTSS increasingly expensive, with fewer guardrails and more demand to come: new KFF analysis,” by Josh Henreckson, McKnights LTC News “Increasingly expensive long-term services and supports should prompt serious questions about how to meet the needs of the aging US population, say the authors of a new KFF report on senior care trends. Monday’s report from the health policy research group highlighted rising costs across the senior care spectrum that already far outstrip the incomes and savings of vulnerable older adults. … Making matters worse, the report showed the ineffectiveness of existing safety nets such as long-term care insurance and
Read More

  “Genworth Unit Moves to File New Long-Term Care Policy,” by Allison Bell, ThinkAdvisor “The stand-alone long-term care insurance business has been through hard times. Genworth’s CareScout LTC provider network now has relationships with 400 home care organizations. The new CareScout Insurance LTCI policies would provide a maximum of $250,000 in benefits.” LTC Comment, Stephen A. Moses, President, Center for Long-Term Care Reform: LTCI on the rebound. Subscribe to GoldenCare News  
Read More

  “Who is eligible for both Medicare and Medicaid?,” by Margie Zabel Fisher, Fortune “Income limits for full Medicaid vary both across and within states. Most commonly, they are based on Supplemental Social Security Income (SSI), which limits people to $943 per month in income and up to $2,000 in savings and other financial assets.” LTC Comment, Stephen A. Moses, President, Center for Long-Term Care Reform: This is literally true, but it almost never applies. In reality, income is unlimited if medical or LTC expenses are high enough. Nor are assets limited because most large assets are exempt and any countable assets are
Read More

  “CDC report: Cognitive disability tops list of disabilities in US adults,” by Donna Shryer, McKnights LTC News “Cognitive disability emerged as the most prevalent disability in the United States in 2022, affecting 13.9% of adults. This is according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s annual update to the Disability and Health Data System (DHDS) released last week. On a broader level, more than 1 in 4 adults in the United States, totaling more than 70 million people, reported having a disability in 2022, DHDS said.” LTC Comment, Stephen A. Moses, President, Center for Long-Term Care Reform: Ominous.
Read More

  “My Dad Was Diagnosed With Dementia. Medicare’s 7-Word Response Baffled Me,” by Kate Ferranti, HuffPost “‘If your parents were poor, I would say don’t worry about this. And if your parents had 2 to 3 million in their IRA accounts, I would say don’t worry about this. But your parents are middle-class, and in this case, that’s a problem.’ An elder care lawyer said this to me when my father was diagnosed with Lewy body dementia. … ‘We don’t consider dementia a medical issue,’ a Medicare rep told me, to my great disbelief. But my dad’s brain — which can no
Read More

  “Home care spending outpaces nursing home spending ‘by far’,” by Kathleen Steele Gaivin, McKnights Senior Living “Spending on healthcare goods and services grew by 8.3% between May 2023 and May 2024, according to the latest monthly Health Sector Economics brief from Altarum, released Thursday. ‘Spending on home healthcare showed the fastest growth by far among major categories, at 22.6% year over year. Nursing home care spending was a distant second, at 9.5% year-over-year growth,’ George Miller, Altarum fellow and senior researcher, told the McKnight’s Business Daily on Thursday.” LTC Comment, Stephen A. Moses, President, Center for Long-Term Care Reform: Nearly all that home
Read More

  “Genworth launches first LTC insurance plan in 5 years as Washington state residents consider ‘crazy’ plan that could end mandatory program,” by Kathleen Steele Gaivin, McKnights Senior Living “The one-year anniversary of the effective date of Washington’s first-in-the nation mandatory, tax-based long-term care insurance program passed on July 1, but voters will have the opportunity to make the program voluntary come November. … ‘It would be crazy to kill it,’ [economist Alicia H. Munnell, director of the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College] said. … Meanwhile, private companies are beefing up efforts to provide long-term care insurance plans. Genworth Financial, for example,
Read More

  “Federal Court Blocks Medicare Agent Pay Cap Regulations,” by Allison Bell, ThinkAdvisor “A federal judge in Texas has blocked the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services from enforcing its new pay rules for Medicare agents. If the stay survives court challenges, it will apply to all Medicare agents throughout the U.S.” LTC Comment, Stephen A. Moses, President, Center for Long-Term Care Reform: HHS and CMS want to micromanage everything. Consumers’ preferences are lost for lack of free-market  signals to enable them. I wonder if this latest development comes from the Texas court’s taking heart from the Supreme Court’s reversing Chevron
Read More

  “Medicaid Efforts to Address Racial Health Disparities,” by Akash Pillai, Elizabeth Hinton, Robin Rudowitz, and Samantha Artiga, KFF “Racial and ethnic disparities in health remain persistent in the United States, driven by inequities in access to and utilization of health care and social and economic factors that drive health, often referred to as social determinants of health (SDOH), that are rooted in historic and ongoing racism and discrimination. As a major source of health coverage for people of color, Medicaid programs are an important potential mechanism to address racial health disparities. Recent coverage gains across racial and ethnic groups between 2019-2022 were largely driven by increases in Medicaid enrollment as
Read More

  “Medicaid’s $100+ Billion Leak,” by Stephen A. Moses, Paragon Health Institute “Medicaid long-term care (LTC) has a problem: The wealthy access funds intended for the most vulnerable. Half or more of Medicaid’s $217 billion annual LTC budget goes to beneficiaries who could otherwise afford to pay privately. This diverts scarce program resources from the neediest recipients while causing caregiver shortages and worsening access and quality problems for people on the program. LTC has been in the news recently because of President Biden’s nursing home staffing mandates (as explored in a previous Prognosis by Jackson Hammond). Unfortunately, misguided government programs, specifically the current
Read More