“Where Long-Term Care Reform Goes Now”

“Where Long-Term Care Reform Goes Now,” by Howard Gleckman, Forbes

Quote:

“While most focus will be on the Medicaid HCBS expansion and family leave, Rep. Tom Suozzi (D-NY) is about to introduce a bill to create a public, catastrophic long-term care insurance program. It is likely to be similar to a 2018 measure proposed by House Energy and Commerce Committee Chair Frank Pallone (D-NJ) and a 2016 proposal by the Long-Term Care Financing Collaborative. … We remain a long way from major long-term care reform this year. But don’t rule it out yet.”

 

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

Politicians and policy analysts want to trap more people on Medicaid with promises of extra billions for home and community-based care. Remember when they insisted that HCBS saved money? No longer. Now that they acknowledge HCBS costs plenty, their grand spending schemes keep hitting a wall of fiscal and political reality. This writer’s perennial preference is to force people to pay for a new compulsory social insurance entitlement by means of a bigger payroll deduction enforced, ultimately, at the point of a gun. Government has a monopoly on the use of force and does not hesitate to use it when citizens balk at paying larger and larger shares of their wages in taxes. Here’s our take on the Suozzi plan: “LTC financing: Be careful what you WISH for,” McKnight’s Senior Living, June 7, 2021. And yes, even before it’s introduced it’s done. Fork it!