Categories
Terms and Conditions
All content expressed in the “Discuss” section of the National Academy of Social Insurance (NASI) website are those of the author or authors and do not reflect the opinion of the NASI staff or Board of Directors. NASI reserves the right to edit or delete any comments deemed offensive or disrespectful.
Social Security: Just the Facts Video
Have you seen our video, “Social Security: Just the Facts?” Click here to learn more and find additional resources for exploring each topic in more depth.
Long-Term Care
Time to Get Moving on a White House Conference on Aging
There’s a reason why the nation has convened a White House Conference on Aging (WHCOA) once a decade, and it’s this: Historically, these seminal events – which involve thousands of people feeding in ideas from communities across the country – have spurred creative consensus at a national level about how apparently intractable current challenges can be practically approached, even as strategies for making promising opportunities a reality over time are also mapped out.
Experts Present Options for Redesigning and Financing America’s Long-Term Care System
Social Insurance is a Critical Base for Achieving Universality and Efficiency
Hundreds of long-term care (LTC) experts gathered in Washington, D.C. today at The SCAN Foundation briefing to discuss private and public options for delivering and financing long-term care to the 12 million Americans who currently need it and the 27 million people expected to need it by 2050.
The discussion comes at a critical time. Congress recently approved the formation of a bipartisan commission on long-term care, tasked with making recommendations on meeting the nation’s needs for affordable long-term care services and support. Direct spending in the United States for long-term care services was $211 billion in 2011, with Medicaid picking up more than 62 percent of the tab.
Read More…Time to Help States Make Lemonade on Issue of Long-Term Care?
A version of this article originally appeared in Roll Call on February 4, 2013.
The enactment of the American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012 averted the so-called fiscal cliff, but it also repealed the Community Living Assistance Services and Supports Act that was intended to create a public mechanism to help people pay for long-term services and supports if they become disabled.
The repeal was not a surprise. More than a year ago the administration abandoned plans to implement CLASS after it became clear that premiums for the program as designed — with participation to be voluntary rather than mandatory — would be too high to attract more than a tiny percentage of the population.
Read More…Lessons from the Likely Demise of CLASS
On October 14, the Obama administration halted implementation of the new federal long-term care insurance program – the Community Living Assistance Services and Supports (CLASS) initiative, which had been tucked into health care reform legislation. It is disappointing, but not surprising that the administration was unable to design a financially self-sustaining, voluntary long-term care insurance program. The unusual legislative journey of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which had no House-Senate conference to clean up the bill, left CLASS with statutory limits that proved unworkable. Without mandatory participation or some other way of achieving near universal participation, the program did not stand a chance.
A Midsummer Policy Sonnet
The piece was written in August 2011
Now is the summer of our blasted dissent,
With our eyes cast upward at the debt ceiling,
And no one seems even remotely content.
Will this fallout leave us fiscally reeling?
Into this bloodless, ever-present, hot fray,
Come bright-eyed, eager interns ready to learn.
They are told for social insurance to pray,
For nothing it will give and take all we earn.
Unemployment is in federal error,
The Class Act has been passed but still needs a fix,
Medicare is causing the old to terror,
Social Security’s done by ‘thirty-six.
But UI’s computers will be updated,
A tweak here, one there, and the Class Act will roll,
By healthcare reform, Medicare is sated,
Though Social Security still has a toll.
