“Higher acuity, assisted living behind nursing home Medicare spending growth, experts say,” by Marty Stempniak, McKnight’s LTC News “Increased acuity and investment in dual eligibles at the state level have resulted in long-stay nursing home residents driving Medicare spending growth, according to a new analysis published this week in Health Affairs. … Pouring over beneficiary data from 2007 to 2015, investigators found that — regardless of Medicaid participation or age — beneficiaries with long-term (three months or longer) nursing home use had some of the highest spending growth rates. Those averaged between 1.7 and 4.1%, they found.” LTC Comment (from
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“LTCI Issuers May Be Counting on Health Improvement That Isn’t Coming: Prudential,” by Allison Bell, ThinkAdvisor “Prudential Financial Inc. is adding $1.4 billion to its long-term care insurance (LTCI) reserves, to reflect the possibility that improvement in the ability of the insureds to function may not show up. Back in 2012, when Prudential stopped selling new LTCI policies, it had few LTCI policyholders collecting benefits. It used data from outside sources to set the assumptions used to decide how much to set aside to pay claims, according to Robert Falzon, the company’s chief financial officer. Prudential had assumed that morbidity
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“Study confirms what many suspect: Assisted living’s growth taking a toll on skilled care private pay,” by John O’Connor, McKnight’s Senior Living “Many operators are convinced senior living is growing at skilled care’s expense. A new study adds nuance to the numbers. ‘Our research suggests private pay occupancy has fallen in nursing homes located in counties with disproportionately high growth in assisted living,’ co-author David C. Grabowski, Ph.D., a professor of healthcare policy at Harvard Medical School, told McKnight’s Senior Living. … The authors cited several possible explanations for the private-pay downturn in skilled care settings. One is that assisted
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