“Getting Old Is a Crisis More and More Americans Can’t Afford,” by Michelle Cottle, New York Times Quote: “To avoid forcing middle-class seniors to impoverish themselves, Medicaid eligibility requirements need to be loosened. Dramatically. But that would place even greater financial pressure on the already strained program and the government budgets that fund it. … In 2012, a broad cross-section of policy experts, consumer advocates and industry representatives formed the Long-Term Care Financing Collaborative to explore more sustainable funding models. The central recommendation of the group’s final report, issued in 2016, was the creation of a universal public insurance program.”  
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“Should Medicaid protect $8 trillion from private senior living costs?,” by Stephen A. Moses, McKnight’s Senior Living Quote: “U.S seniors hold $8.05 trillion of home equity. Medicaid exempts between $603,000 and $906,000 of that wealth per person when determining financial eligibility for long-term care, the program’s most expensive benefit. That exemption is so high that scholars recently concluded ‘we estimate that nearly the entire elderly population would meet the home equity threshold.’ … Ever since the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1993 (OBRA ’93), state Medicaid programs have been required to recover the cost of care provided from the estates, including home equity, of deceased recipients. …
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“Schweitzer urges Inslee to end long-term care insurance benefit,” by Anthony Kuipers, Moscow-Pullman Daily News Quote: “The founder and president of Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories wrote a letter to Washington Gov. Jay Inslee asking him to end a new state-mandated insurance program he believes is unfair to SEL’s employees living in Washington and Idaho. Edmund Schweitzer’s letter criticized the Long-Term Care Trust Act, which established a mandatory long-term care insurance benefit in 2019. … The letter states that SEL’s human resources department has received more than 400 emails from the company’s employees saying they do not want this benefit. SEL, based
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“A Woman’s Guide to Long-Term Care,” by Michael Aloi, Kiplinger Quote: “Spending down an estate to qualify for Medicaid is one way to pay for long-term care, but it’s not ideal in my opinion. The risk the facility you want is not available for Medicaid recipients looms large. Also, to qualify for Medicaid may leave you financially destitute, not ideal after a lifetime of working. Finally, the rules for Medicaid can change. For some, Medicaid is the only option. For others, who have time on their side and the resources available, now is the time to start planning. … I
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“2021 Poverty Projections: Assessing the Impact of Benefits and Stimulus Measures,” by Laura Wheaton, Linda Giannarelli, and Ilham Dehry, Urban Institute Quote: “In an earlier brief, we estimated that the American Rescue Plan Act, enacted in March 2021, would reduce the 2021 annual poverty rate to 8.7 percent (Wheaton et al. 2021). We now project a 2021 poverty rate of 7.7 percent for 2021. … Using the Supplemental Poverty Measure, the annual poverty rate projection for 2021 of 7.7 percent is well below the rate of 13.9 percent that we estimate for 2018. … The federal stimulus checks have a
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“The InLTCgentsia,” by Stephen A. Moses, Broker World Quote: “What I’ve just described would solve the middle market problem. We don’t need to worry about the wealthy; they can take care of themselves. But, what about the poor? Having removed the perverse incentives that discourage responsible long term care planning, many fewer people will end up needing long term care but unable to pay. There will be no more incentive to hire attorneys to manipulate government eligibility rules in order to self-impoverish artificially. The relatively small numbers of genuinely needy people who remain could be served by private charity and/or a
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