Connecting the Long-Term Care Partnership and CLASS Act Insurance

The link below is to a copy of a recently published policy brief by Mark Meiners. Connecting the Long-Term Care Partnership and CLASS Act Insurance is a brief designed to help states with Partnership programs inform consumers and other stakeholders in considering these different approaches for long-term care insurance. It compares the two programs in a wide variety of areas including benefits, eligibility, affordability, etc. The brief can be accessed at www.chcs.org. Please feel free to contact Professor Meiners with any questions or comments.

AARP: CLASS Program Gives Americans New Option to Plan for Long-Term Care

AARP Executive Vice President John Rother released this statement following today’s remarks by Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius on the Community Living Assistance Services and Supports (CLASS) program, a voluntary insurance option for long-term services and supports created in the Affordable Care Act:

“American families are struggling with the staggering cost of long-term care while state governments look to reduce costs in their Medicaid programs—the largest payers of long-term care.  The CLASS program created by the Affordable Care Act gives Americans a new option to plan for the cost of long-term services and supports through a voluntary insurance program.  At the same time, the program will help take some of the burden off of Medicaid over time as more people are able to plan and pay for their own care.

“We know that 86 percent of our members want to live in their homes for as long as possible, yet too few are able to get the services they need to continue living independently.  The CLASS program can help offer peace of mind to American families and help cover some of the costs of services and supports they need to live independently in their homes and communities.  AARP is committed to giving our members and all older Americans the information they need in the coming months and years to decide if CLASS is right for them.”

Long Term Care Discussion Group - New Website

The Long Term Care Discussion Group is an informal non-partisan networking group of long term care (LTC) policy stakeholders. It meets monthly in Washington, DC (with telephone access when logistics allow) to hear from policymakers, practitioners, researchers, advocates and others regarding long term care policy issues, research, education and advocacy. Participants include stakeholders from the LTC insurance industry, the provider community, researchers and academics, federal government agencies, Capitol Hill, consumer advocates and others.

Topics covered in recent years include: White House perspectives on LTC initiatives, the federal government's LTC consumer awareness efforts, House and Senate briefings on various Hill proposals and others. Research topics have included the Long Term Care Admissions Cohort Study, an analysis of the impact of state tax incentives for LTC insurance; and state requirements for in-home worker safety checks. Recent topics included a discussion of the newly enacted CLASS Act, Advance Directives, Caregiver Needs and Supports, and other topics.

Its website includes resource materials used by presenters in the monthly meetings.
Long Term Care Discussion Group

Family Value: When Insurers Deny Claims - WSJ.com

By ANNE TERGESEN

Some families with long-term-care insurance policies—under fire recently for steep premium increases—are encountering claims denials that can prevent or delay the collection of benefits. But there are ways policyholders can avoid such problems.

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  Image by Mark Matcho

H.R. 63: To amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 and title XIX of the Social Security Act to reform the... (GovTrack.us)

To amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 and title XIX of the Social Security Act to reform the provision of long-term care insurance.

Sponsor:	Rep. Lloyd Doggett [D-TX25]hide cosponsors Cosponsors: Janice Schakowsky [D-IL9]
Text:	The text of this legislation is not yet available on GovTrack. It may not have been made available by the Government Printing Office yet.
Status:	Introduced Jan 5, 2011 Referred to Committee View Committee Assignments Reported by Committee ... House Vote ... Senate Vote ... Signed by President ... This bill is in the first step in the legislative process. Introduced bills and resolutions first go to committees that deliberate, investigate, and revise them before they go to general debate. The majority of bills and resolutions never make it out of committee. [Last Updated: Jan 7, 2011 6:13AM]
Last Action:	Jan 5, 2011: Referred to House Ways and Means

Current Status

Borrowers as Prey, Again - NYTimes.com

Image via CrunchBaseNY Times Editorial - December 19, 2010

The Federal Reserve has been rightly criticized for not protecting borrowers — and the economy — in the years before the financial crisis. Under the law, it had the power and the obligation to curb bad lending. It was warned, by Fed insiders and by consumer advocates, of lender recklessness. It still failed to act.

Now, the Fed has proposed a rule that could undermine an important borrower protection passed by Congress in 2008. Hasn’t anything been learned?

 At issue are reverse mortgages, which let homeowners, starting at age 62, borrow against their home equity without monthly repayments. Instead, fees and interest are added to their balance, with the total repaid later, often by selling the home when the owner dies.

The 2008 law prohibited “cross selling,” in which lenders required reverse-mortgage borrowers to use some of the loan proceeds to buy other financial products, such as annuities or long-term care insurance policies, that in many instances made no sense for the borrowers. The Fed has proposed a much weaker prohibition that would allow lenders to sell financial products to reverse-mortgage borrowers as long as the purchase occurred at least 10 days after the loan was made.
Full Article

Related articles

• Borrowers as Prey, Again (nytimes.com)
• Reverse Mortgages Slammed by Consumer Reports (zillow.com)
• Hud Reverse Mortgages Hecm (themortgagepot.com)
• Reverse-Mortgage Debate Heats Up (online.wsj.com)

The Pinnacle of Culture Change | ChangingAging.org

by Peg LaPort
UPDATE: Please continue this conversation on the newly-created LinkedIn Changing Aging Network.
Now that the snail mail has delivered hard copies of this month’s outstanding issue of Provider Magazine, I’d like to revisit highlights of the cover story: “Culture Change Goes Main Stream.”

• In 2005, nearly three-quarters of health care opinion leaders surveyed by the Commonwealth Fund were unfamiliar with the concept of “culture change,” despite nearly 20 years of advocacy within the movement.
• Three years later in 2008, 66 percent of respondents reported they were familiar with the culture change movement — a dramatic turnaround.
• A 2007 National Survey of Nursing Homes reported one-third of nursing homes had adopted some culture change practices and another one-third were planning to follow suit.

What’s driving the change in attitudes? Certainly, decades of work by advocates in the culture change movement pushing for more person-centered approaches to long term care, such as Dr. Bill’s Eden Alternative philosophy and Green House Project, labeled by Provider as the “peak” of the culture change movement. As of this year, 79 Green House homes have opened in 14 states, and another 132 homes are either in development or under construction in another 12 states.
But the biggest indicator of a sea-change in attitudes towards culture is the conversion of big for-profit facilities:
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Details on the Class Act - Part One - The New Old Age Blog - NYTimes.com

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By PAULA SPAN
The New Old Age has been following the Class Act, the first national plan for long-term care insurance, since last summer, but the late Senator Edward M. Kennedy and his staff began working on the current version of this plan in 2003. It was tucked into the Democrats’ health care legislation and thus, without much public attention, became law last month. Call it Mr. Kennedy’s final bequest.

The program underwent a number of changes during the health care debate, so some early projections are now out of date. And many of the details we most want to know have yet to be established by the secretary of Health and Human Services, Kathleen Sebelius, who is going to be one busy woman for the next couple of years.

But we do know the plan’s basic outlines, so I’ll try to respond to some of the many questions readers raised the last time we talked about this.

My sources this round include Howard Bedlin, vice president for advocacy at the National Council on Aging; the health economist Barbara Manard of the American Association of Homes and Services for the Aging; Jesse Slome, who heads the American Association for Long-Term Care Insurance; and Connie Garner, who after 17 years is about to leave her job on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.

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Details on the Class Act, Pt. 2 - The New Old Age Blog - NYTimes.com

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By PAULA SPAN

Posting about the new federal Class Act invariably brings at least two kinds of responses from New Old Age readers: questions about how it will operate and who will be able to participate, and a tide of gloomy predictions, often from insurance agents and industry spokesman, of spiking premiums and eventual insolvency.

Since this represents the country’s first attempt at public long-term care insurance, we can’t say with assurance whether the optimists who helped get the law passed or the pessimists who tried to derail it are correct.

“It hasn’t been tried,” said Barbara Manard, a health economist at the American Association of Homes and Services for the Aging. “But what we have tried isn’t working. We have to try something new.” Given the sometimes crushing costs of long-term care, I’d call that statement, at least, unassailable.
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