“The Middle Ground For Fixing Long-Term Care Costs: The WISH Act”

“The Middle Ground For Fixing Long-Term Care Costs: The WISH Act,” by Marc A. Cohen and Stuart M. Butler, Health Affairs

Quote:

“The [WISH Act] legislation seeks to address the growing problem that needing LTSS for a long spell and, particularly, receiving them in a nursing home, can be financially devastating even for middle-class Americans with significant savings. A year in a two-bed nursing-home room can cost upwards of $93,000, causing many to exhaust their funds and become reliant on Medicaid.”

 

 

LTC Comment, Stephen A. Moses, President, Center for Long-Term Care Reform:

This Health Affairs blog post pumping the “WISH Act” contains misinformation and misinterpretation. We’ll dissect, analyze and critique it in the next LTC Bullet. But for now, just consider this quote: “A year in a two-bed nursing-home room can cost upwards of $93,000, causing many to exhaust their funds and become reliant on Medicaid.” Academics in the socialist mainstream frequently claim that many people spend down their life’s savings on nursing home care. But they never cite evidence for this “fact.” That’s because there is none. Private-pay is down to between seven and eight percent of nursing home revenue and most of that is for short-term, not long-term care. What actually happens is that people qualify for Medicaid to pick up nursing home charges much more easily than the scholars admit who are advocating for government to take an even bigger role in long-term care financing. Asking government to fix the problems government created is folly. For full analysis of how the country got into this long-term care mess and what to do about it read Medicaid and Long-Term Care.