“Can a Reverse Mortgage Pay for Long-Term Care?,” by Rachel Murphy, Investopedia Quote: “Key Takeaways: Home equity conversion mortgages can be used for any purpose, including long-term care. Once the borrower has left the home for more than 12 consecutive months, the house will be sold to repay the mortgage and interest. Joint borrowers have more leeway, as the reverse mortgage doesn’t have to be repaid until the last borrower leaves.”   LTC Comment, Stephen A. Moses, President, Center for Long-Term Care Reform: Reverse mortgages could be a great source of LTC financing, including generating funds to pay LTC insurance
Read More

“Beware the growth of Medicare Advantage, Harvard professor says,” by Liza Berger, McKnight’s Home Care Quote: “Medicare Advantage (MA) is growing too fast, putting the Medicare program in jeopardy. The government needs to put speed bumps in place to curb its trajectory and bolster traditional Medicare (TM). That is the opinion of a Harvard professor and senior adviser to the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation, who wrote an article about the issue late last week in Health Affairs. MA, a private form of Medicare insurance, is expected to surpass 50% of eligible Medicare lives within the next year and 69% of the Medicare population
Read More

“We can turn the caregiver crisis around, but fast action is needed,” by Katie Smith Sloan, The Hill Quote: “The COVID-19 pandemic laid bare how decades of state and federal underinvestment in our aging services infrastructure has created a crisis for families trying to access long-term care services—and historic challenges for aging services providers who serve millions of older adults. … A bold, all-of-government approach is needed to get us out of this crisis—and ensure consistent access to quality care that older adults and their families deserve.”   LTC Comment, Stephen A. Moses, President, Center for Long-Term Care Reform: It
Read More

“Kennedy, Inhofe introduce bill to protect Medicaid recipients,” Senator John Kennedy (R, LA) Quote: “The Protecting Medicaid Beneficiaries Act would expand the Asset Verification Services (AVS) program, which helps ensure that Medicaid beneficiaries are legally eligible to receive benefits, to all Medicaid applicants. AVS currently only applies to aged, blind and disabled Medicaid applicants.”   LTC Comment, Stephen A. Moses, President, Center for Long-Term Care Reform: A step in the right direction if it passes. But the irony is that fraud is not Medicaid’s only problem. As important are all the legal ways people qualify for Medicaid’s most expensive benefit,
Read More

“Don’t Look Up? Medicare Advantage’s Trajectory And The Future Of Medicare,” by J. Michael McWilliams, Health Affairs Quote: “After a 9 percent increase from 2021 to 2022, enrollment in the Medicare Advantage (MA) program is expected to surpass 50 percent of the eligible Medicare population within the next year. At its current rate of growth, MA is on track to reach 69 percent of the Medicare population by the end of 2030. The subsidies fueling MA’s rapid expansion are well-documented. … MA’s rapid growth has stirred controversy, focused primarily on its exploitation of a manipulable risk-adjustment system. This has allowed MA to appropriate growing, unintended
Read More

“Cognitive decline rates more than double over 10 years: study,” by Alicia Lasek, McKnight’s LTC News Quote: “The incidence of cognitive decline more than doubled between 2009 and 2018 among seniors, according to a study published Thursday. … In 2009, physicians recorded 1 new case of cognitive decline for every 1,000 patients observed. This number rose to 3 new recorded cases per 1,000 by 2018. The number of patients reporting concerns about memory remained stable during the study period. … Full findings were published in the journal Clinical Epidemiology.”   LTC Comment, Stephen A. Moses, President, Center for Long-Term Care Reform: Is
Read More

“Where Long-Term Care Insurance Is Heading,” by Margie Barrie, ThinkAdvisor Quote: “One major theme at the ILTCI Conference was the need to use technology better. Another major theme was finding ways to keep long-term care insurance holders in their homes longer. A venture capital firm sponsored a competition for firms with ideas about how to use technology to promote aging in place.”   LTC Comment, Stephen A. Moses, President, Center for Long-Term Care Reform: ILTCI conference news.               Subscribe to GoldenCare News  
Read More

“Opinion: The imperative of equality in long-term care,” by Kathleen D. Hayes and Anna Doroghazi, CTPost Quote: “As we age, long-term care needs threaten the financial stability we aim to achieve. To cover the exorbitant costs of care, many couples turn to Medicaid Title 19.  … Without financial protections in place, families are forced into a mad spending dash, purchasing furniture; renovating the home; purchasing prepaid funerals — in essence, throwing money out the window for the sake of expediting eligibility for vital supports and services. The same vital supports and services that upper middle-class families access with $137,400 of
Read More

  “Time Is on Group Long-Term Care Insurance Sellers’ Side,” by Margie Barrie, ThinkAdvisor Quote: “Many workers are now caregivers. They are hungry for ideas about how to pay for their own care. Text messaging is the new email.”   LTC Comment, Stephen A. Moses, President, Center for Long-Term Care Reform: ILTCI conference news.               Subscribe to GoldenCare News  
Read More