“LTCG’s Annual Cost of Care Report Reveals How the Global Pandemic and Other Industry Trends Impacted Long Term Care Costs,” LTCG, Business Wire Quote: “The COVID-19 pandemic had a significant impact on senior care recipients and care providers. This year’s data reflects a notable shift in claims from facilities to home-based care in 2020, which accelerated an existing preference by consumers to age at home. In the face of that trend, home care providers had to compete for scarce caregivers, while facilities battled higher costs amid lower occupancy. LTCG’s study found that the average hourly rate for a home health
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“Did you receive a ‘long-term care’ email from your employer? Here’s what it means to opt-in or opt-out,” by Mike Lewis, GeekWire Quote: “They arrived over the past month in the inboxes of Microsoft coders, Amazon copy editors, and Boeing engineers along with tens of thousands of other employees across Washington state: Emails from payroll departments or human resources telling staffers that they might have the option to opt-out of a new state payroll tax to fund long-term care. To which many employees responded: ‘What in the world…?’” … OK. So should I opt-in or out? Those are not the
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“Meetings, rules and deadlines push long-term care law along,” by Elizabeth Hovde, Washington Policy Center Quote: “An investment subcommittee working on the WA Cares Fund — the state’s new long-term care entitlement program that comes with a payroll tax on workers beginning in January — met today. The meeting offered confirmation that the 2020 ballot-box defeat of a constitutional amendment set this program up for long-term failure. The constitutional amendment would have allowed the state to invest the program’s dollars into stocks and other methods of investment. Without such investment, the fund appears doomed, despite a payroll tax of 58 cents per
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“Healthcare infrastructure missing ‘centralized access point’ to long-term care: experts,” by Danielle Brown, McKnight’s LTC News Quote: “The healthcare industry is lacking a centralized, community-based resource that can easily direct families to long-term care services and support when the time arises, according to three prominent industry experts.”   LTC Comment, Stephen A. Moses, President, Center for Long-Term Care Reform: What else is new? Three experts propose an expensive “solution” with no clue how to pay for it, much less why the problem exists in the first place. We have no “centralized, community-based resource” because America relies on a fragmented, publicly
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“One Family’s Lessons Learned From a Decade of Caregiving,” by Claire Ansberry, Wall Street Journal Quote: “The family learned much along their decade-long caregiving journey, about setting up trusts, getting help in the home and respecting each other’s decisions. They think about a few things they would have done differently. … He worried about money, so Suzanne went with her dad to see an attorney specializing in elder law. He helped him set up a new trust to better preserve their assets in case either needed long-term care. It replaced an earlier trust set up shortly after Lucy was diagnosed
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“3 Experts Have Resigned From An FDA Committee Over Alzheimer’s Drug Approval,” by Bill Chappell, NPR Quote: “Three experts have now resigned from a Food and Drug Administration advisory committee after the agency approved an Alzheimer’s drug called Aduhelm against the wishes of nearly every member on the panel. The drug — its generic name is aducanumab — was approved on Monday, setting off a variety of responses, from celebrations among some patients, caregivers and doctors to pointed questions about the drug’s benefits and costs.” Read full article in The Hill:  https://thehill.com/opinion/finance/557675-using-medicaid-to-protect-inheritances” LTC Comment, Stephen A. Moses, President, Center for Long-Term Care
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“Taxpayers Protecting Inheritances,” by Grace-Marie Turner, Galen Institute Quote: “We try to keep an eye on hot health policy developments for you, but we also look ahead at emerging opportunities and dangers. Today we are focusing on the latter in an article just published in The Hill, written by leading long-term care expert Steve Moses and Galen Senior Fellow and Medicaid expert Brian Blase. The title says it all: ‘Using Medicaid to protect inheritances.’ … Here’s the issue: Many affluent Americans are hiring lawyers to protect their estates so they don’t have to spend their own money on long-term care.  Homes of more than
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“Most Americans Remain Unprepared For The Possibility Of Extended Care,”Advisor Magazine Quote:  “A new survey from Thrivent reveals a lack of awareness of the critical need to plan for long term care. Access the survey here. … Although the pandemic magnified the impact of long-term care on individuals and their caregivers’ daily lives, more than half of survey respondents (51%) said COVID-19 did not change their approach to extended care planning at all. This is especially concerning when considering the survey’s broader insights, which found that 70% of Americans have not documented their plans for extended care. Overall these survey results
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