Health Care Reform Bills Would Offer Help with Long-Term Care

Americans could enroll in a new federal plan and receive cash benefits to help them age in place.

As lawmakers work out the details of health care reform, one sweeping new provision winning widespread support would set up a new national insurance program to help older adults and people with disabilities live in their homes and communities instead of in nursing homes.

The plan, paid for through employee payroll deductions, would offer Americans a choice to enroll and pay monthly premiums. In return, their coverage would provide cash payments of around $75 a day when they need help with daily activities such as bathing, dressing or eating. The money could also be spent on assistance such as a wheelchair ramp or other home modifications, even respite care-extra help to give caregivers a break.

Proponents of the idea say it will save taxpayers’ money by reducing state and federal Medicaid spending on long-term care, since it provides older Americans and those with disabilities the dignity and independence of living in their homes or with relatives or in assisted living facilities.

“It will have a major transformational impact on the cost of long-term care in this country, which everyone agrees is out of control,” says Larry Minnix, CEO of the American Association of Homes and Services for the Aging in Washington, a group of nonprofits that provide services to older adults. “The term no-brainer comes up again and again.”

Opponents say that people most likely to need this kind of coverage will flock in disproportionate numbers to the plan, driving up the premium costs so much that healthier individuals won’t participate, thus endangering the whole program.

It would not be right to set up a program that people expect a benefit from in the future … [but] the program may not be there when people need it,” says Whit Cornman, spokesman for the American Council of Life Insurers.