Arthur Rudnick
Guru
- 1,652
December 13, 2012, 11:17 am
[FONT="Calibri","sans-serif"]By PAULA SPAN[/FONT][FONT="Calibri","sans-serif"]http://newoldage.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/13/new-life-for-the-class-act/ [/FONT]
[FONT="Arial","sans-serif"]Now that President Obama has won a second term, the Supreme Court has ruled the Affordable Care Act constitutional and the election has made Congressional attempts to repeal it unlikely, a few advocates for the elderly are quietly talking about resurrecting the Class Act, or some variant of it.[/FONT]
[FONT="Arial","sans-serif"]The first voluntary national program for long-term care insurance Class remains part of the health care law, even though the Obama administration shelved it last year. And certainly the need to protect families against the enormous financial burden of caring for older people or younger ones with disabilities will only grow more urgent.[/FONT]
[FONT="Arial","sans-serif"]“There’s a window of opportunity now,” said Connie Garner, director of the advocacy group Advance Class. “The stars are lined up to have a productive conversation.”[/FONT]
[FONT="Arial","sans-serif"]Class, an acronym for Community Living Assistance Services and Supports, would have allowed working adults (including the self-employed) to pay reasonable monthly premiums for a fixed time, then be eligible for cash benefits if they needed help at any age with the so-called activities of daily living. Deciding exactly how it would work was left to Kathleen Sebelius, the secretary of health and human services. A respected insurance industry actuary was hired to crunch the numbers.[/FONT]
[FONT="Arial","sans-serif"]Class was a legacy of Senator Edward M. Kennedy, who first introduced a long-term care insurance bill nine years ago. Nobody paid much attention to the provision during the wrangling and horse-trading over the Affordable Care Act. When it finally passed, I was calling people in Washington to ask: “Is it still in there? Is Class a law now?”[/FONT]
[FONT="Arial","sans-serif"]It was, and it took an approach you would think conservatives might applaud — no federal dollars involved, people taking responsibility for helping to finance their own future care. Though never intended to pay all the costs, it could have made a big difference for families hit by disability, from a bike accident that cripples a young person to the dementia that afflicts an old one.[/FONT]
[FONT="Arial","sans-serif"]But Obamacare opponents took aim at Class, and last fall Ms. Sebelius announced that after 19 months of research, “we have not identified a way to make Class work at this time.” The actuary was sent packing.[/FONT]
[FONT="Arial","sans-serif"]“Things got so polarized around the whole health care bill that Class became a punching bag,” said Larry Minnix, president of Leading Age, which represents nonprofit providers of services and housing for the aging.[/FONT]
[FONT="Arial","sans-serif"]Supporters like Mr. Minnix and Ms. Garner said they thought that with some adjustments, planners could fix problems like “adverse selection” (too many sick or disabled people buying in and needing benefits, as there is no ban on pre-existing conditions, and not enough healthy younger people paying premiums).[/FONT]
[FONT="Arial","sans-serif"]Interestingly, the actuary who lost his job, Robert Yee, agreed that the program could be successful. He had not completed the research when the ax fell, but “from an actuarial perspective, we can make this work,” he told me at the time.[/FONT]
[FONT="Arial","sans-serif"]So once the looming fiscal crisis has abated, the aging and disability groups, unions and medical associations that have always backed some form of national long-term care insurance will ask Ms. Sebelius to continue the research and to appoint the advisory committee the law calls for.[/FONT]
[FONT="Arial","sans-serif"]“Keep it in the law, do the studies, finish the work,” Mr. Minnix said. “If it’s not Class, replace it with something else. These are solvable problems.”[/FONT]
[FONT="Arial","sans-serif"]Ms. Garner said: “If you want to reform Medicaid by getting costs under control, give people another option to pay for long-term care. The private insurance approach doesn’t work.”[/FONT]
[FONT="Arial","sans-serif"]Indeed, several insurance giants — Prudential, Unum, MetLife — no longer sell long-term care policies. “It’s a very small marketplace,” said Jesse Slome, who directs the American Association for Long-Term Care Insurance. The industry says about eight million Americans have such coverage, either individually or through employer groups, buying it at an average age of 57. But already, 50 million Americans are over age 62.[/FONT]
[FONT="Arial","sans-serif"]Mr. Slome, who agrees that the need is intensifying, is skeptical about reviving Class. “Nobody on the Democratic side is saying, ‘We need to open this up again,’ ” he said. “Certainly the Republicans aren’t going to.”[/FONT]
[FONT="Arial","sans-serif"]Mr. Kennedy could have dragged others along to make this a reality, Mr. Slome said. But Mr. Kennedy died in 2009, leaving no one of his stature to continue the fight. “It’s going to be 10 years of talk” before anything substantive happens, Mr. Slome predicted.[/FONT]
[FONT="Arial","sans-serif"]Ms. Garner, a top Kennedy staff member for years, sees it differently, of course. “After nine years of working on this, there hasn’t been another idea put on the table,” she said. “I think it’s a good time to try to get a solution.”[/FONT]
[FONT="Calibri","sans-serif"]By PAULA SPAN[/FONT][FONT="Calibri","sans-serif"]http://newoldage.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/13/new-life-for-the-class-act/ [/FONT]
[FONT="Arial","sans-serif"]Now that President Obama has won a second term, the Supreme Court has ruled the Affordable Care Act constitutional and the election has made Congressional attempts to repeal it unlikely, a few advocates for the elderly are quietly talking about resurrecting the Class Act, or some variant of it.[/FONT]
[FONT="Arial","sans-serif"]The first voluntary national program for long-term care insurance Class remains part of the health care law, even though the Obama administration shelved it last year. And certainly the need to protect families against the enormous financial burden of caring for older people or younger ones with disabilities will only grow more urgent.[/FONT]
[FONT="Arial","sans-serif"]“There’s a window of opportunity now,” said Connie Garner, director of the advocacy group Advance Class. “The stars are lined up to have a productive conversation.”[/FONT]
[FONT="Arial","sans-serif"]Class, an acronym for Community Living Assistance Services and Supports, would have allowed working adults (including the self-employed) to pay reasonable monthly premiums for a fixed time, then be eligible for cash benefits if they needed help at any age with the so-called activities of daily living. Deciding exactly how it would work was left to Kathleen Sebelius, the secretary of health and human services. A respected insurance industry actuary was hired to crunch the numbers.[/FONT]
[FONT="Arial","sans-serif"]Class was a legacy of Senator Edward M. Kennedy, who first introduced a long-term care insurance bill nine years ago. Nobody paid much attention to the provision during the wrangling and horse-trading over the Affordable Care Act. When it finally passed, I was calling people in Washington to ask: “Is it still in there? Is Class a law now?”[/FONT]
[FONT="Arial","sans-serif"]It was, and it took an approach you would think conservatives might applaud — no federal dollars involved, people taking responsibility for helping to finance their own future care. Though never intended to pay all the costs, it could have made a big difference for families hit by disability, from a bike accident that cripples a young person to the dementia that afflicts an old one.[/FONT]
[FONT="Arial","sans-serif"]But Obamacare opponents took aim at Class, and last fall Ms. Sebelius announced that after 19 months of research, “we have not identified a way to make Class work at this time.” The actuary was sent packing.[/FONT]
[FONT="Arial","sans-serif"]“Things got so polarized around the whole health care bill that Class became a punching bag,” said Larry Minnix, president of Leading Age, which represents nonprofit providers of services and housing for the aging.[/FONT]
[FONT="Arial","sans-serif"]Supporters like Mr. Minnix and Ms. Garner said they thought that with some adjustments, planners could fix problems like “adverse selection” (too many sick or disabled people buying in and needing benefits, as there is no ban on pre-existing conditions, and not enough healthy younger people paying premiums).[/FONT]
[FONT="Arial","sans-serif"]Interestingly, the actuary who lost his job, Robert Yee, agreed that the program could be successful. He had not completed the research when the ax fell, but “from an actuarial perspective, we can make this work,” he told me at the time.[/FONT]
[FONT="Arial","sans-serif"]So once the looming fiscal crisis has abated, the aging and disability groups, unions and medical associations that have always backed some form of national long-term care insurance will ask Ms. Sebelius to continue the research and to appoint the advisory committee the law calls for.[/FONT]
[FONT="Arial","sans-serif"]“Keep it in the law, do the studies, finish the work,” Mr. Minnix said. “If it’s not Class, replace it with something else. These are solvable problems.”[/FONT]
[FONT="Arial","sans-serif"]Ms. Garner said: “If you want to reform Medicaid by getting costs under control, give people another option to pay for long-term care. The private insurance approach doesn’t work.”[/FONT]
[FONT="Arial","sans-serif"]Indeed, several insurance giants — Prudential, Unum, MetLife — no longer sell long-term care policies. “It’s a very small marketplace,” said Jesse Slome, who directs the American Association for Long-Term Care Insurance. The industry says about eight million Americans have such coverage, either individually or through employer groups, buying it at an average age of 57. But already, 50 million Americans are over age 62.[/FONT]
[FONT="Arial","sans-serif"]Mr. Slome, who agrees that the need is intensifying, is skeptical about reviving Class. “Nobody on the Democratic side is saying, ‘We need to open this up again,’ ” he said. “Certainly the Republicans aren’t going to.”[/FONT]
[FONT="Arial","sans-serif"]Mr. Kennedy could have dragged others along to make this a reality, Mr. Slome said. But Mr. Kennedy died in 2009, leaving no one of his stature to continue the fight. “It’s going to be 10 years of talk” before anything substantive happens, Mr. Slome predicted.[/FONT]
[FONT="Arial","sans-serif"]Ms. Garner, a top Kennedy staff member for years, sees it differently, of course. “After nine years of working on this, there hasn’t been another idea put on the table,” she said. “I think it’s a good time to try to get a solution.”[/FONT]
