PRESS-NEWS.org - Press Release Distribution
PRESS RELEASES DISTRIBUTION

New entitlement program not a replacement for long-term care insurance

New entitlement program not a replacement for long-term care insurance
2010-10-27
(Press-News.org) CHAMPAIGN, Ill. – An obscure provision in the health care reform bill has the potential to seriously alter the long-term care landscape for older Americans, but it may not be as beneficial to retirees as it will be for near-retirees and successive generations of workers, new research by a University of Illinois elder law expert warns.

Richard L. Kaplan, an expert on federal taxes and retirement issues, says the new federal entitlement program, known as Community Living Assistance Services and Supports, or CLASS, shouldn't be viewed as a replacement for long-term care insurance, since it's unlikely to make much of a dent in the cost of paying for institutional settings, such as assisted living facilities or nursing homes.

"CLASS is a major addition to the array of options that clients may want to consider in financing their long-term care, but it's not for everyone," Kaplan said.

Kaplan says the CLASS program, which goes into effect Jan. 1, 2011, has many advantages: There's no lifetime cap on benefits; it's implicitly backed by the government, so it's an excellent bet to stay in business; and it's open to everyone, regardless of pre-existing conditions. But its active employment requirement means that current retirees will need to look elsewhere to fund their long-term care needs.

"Near-retirees and those currently working will have the most interest in CLASS, and will want to take a close look at this program," Kaplan said. "But if you're already retired, you can't participate because the statute requires new enrollees to be currently employed."

Although the program is supposed to start next January, with payments beginning as early as 2016, Kaplan says there's no plan in place yet.

"People might think, 'Now I've got coverage,' " he said. "But we really don't know the program's full contours. The Department of Health and Human Services has a statutory deadline of October 2012 to devise a plan, including specific premium costs and benefit amounts."

The only parameter set forth in the legislation is that benefits must be no less than an average of $50 per day, which won't be nearly enough to replace long-term care insurance.

"CLASS benefits do not pretend to cover the full cost of institutional long-term care settings, which can be as much as $200 per day," Kaplan said.

CLASS benefits can be used for just about anything related to long-term care, including home modifications, assistive technology and home care aides, and even paying an adult child for care given to an older parent.

"What CLASS covers well are those in-between stages before a nursing home, which a lot of older adults go through," Kaplan said. "People want assistance with the kinds of long-term care that are not as expensive as nursing homes, and that is what CLASS is meant to pay for."

One of the major benefits of CLASS is that, unlike long-term care insurance, once you start to claim benefits, there's no limit on the benefits received. CLASS also likely will be attractive because no one can be rejected on the basis of pre-existing medical conditions.

"That's huge," Kaplan said. "Some critics say this feature is a detriment, because a lot of high-risk candidates may enroll in the program, while healthier people may say, 'I can get better insurance for less,' thereby setting up a classic adverse selection situation. After all, insurance works only if you can spread the risk across a fairly diverse pool that includes low-risk persons as well as higher-risk participants."

Kaplan says that the current long-term care insurance model has been around for more than three decades, and the verdict is in: It's not very popular.

"Only about 10 percent of older adults have long-term care insurance," he said. "Early LTC policies covered nursing homes exclusively on the premise that they are the most expensive option for long-term care and that people should be able to pay for the less-expensive care options themselves. That product was not terribly attractive – nobody wants to go to a nursing home, and nobody wants to think about going to a nursing home."

With CLASS, if employers sign up, all employees are automatically enrolled unless they opt out. For workers, if your employer signs up and you're automatically enrolled, "you may need to think seriously about whether you want this insurance," Kaplan said.

But if your biggest financial concern is the cost of an extended stay in a nursing home, you might want to look beyond the CLASS program.

"From a financial exposure standpoint, an extended stay in a nursing home is the worst-case scenario because it's such a big-ticket item," Kaplan said. "If you're already retired, CLASS is not for you. For everyone else, when your employer sends you a notice saying that they are participating in CLASS, don't toss it aside. Talk to your family and really think about what you want to do about this critical but often-ignored subject."



INFORMATION:

The study, "Financing Long-Term Care After Health Care Reform," appears in the current issue of The Journal of Retirement Planning and is available online.

Editor's note: To contact Richard Kaplan, call 217-333-2499; e-mail rkaplan@illinois.edu.


[Attachments] See images for this press release:
New entitlement program not a replacement for long-term care insurance

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

Targeted radiation therapy minimizes GI side effects for prostate cancer patients, Penn study shows

2010-10-27
SAN DIEGO -- Prostate cancer patients who receive intensity modulated radiation therapy (IMRT) are less apt to suffer serious gastrointestinal complications following their treatment than those who receive three-dimensional conformal radiotherapy (CRT), according to new research from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. The study, which will be presented Nov. 1 at the 52nd Annual Meeting of the American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO) in San Diego, found that men who were treated with IMRT had fewer serious bowel complications, including painful rectal ...

School attendance, refusal skills combat smoking risk in youth

2010-10-27
COLUMBIA, Mo. – Asian-American youth are one of the fastest growing populations in the United States. Although Asian Americans begin smoking later in life, they are more likely to smoke regularly and at a higher rate than other ethnic or racial groups, according to the Department of Health and Human Services. Now, a University of Missouri researcher is examining the unique differences in adolescent tobacco use among Asians and other groups to provide specific recommendations for prevention and treatment. "Given the large number of addicted teenagers, tobacco control ...

Tornado warnings are too often ignored

2010-10-27
EAST LANSING, Mich. — With big storms ripping across the Midwest, Bob Drost is hoping people are paying attention to the severe weather and tornado warnings. Unfortunately, Drost, a doctoral student at Michigan State University, knows that many times those warnings are ignored, according to his research. "Only 63 percent understood that a warning is the most urgent National Weather Service statement during severe weather," he said. Next week, Drost will present his research findings at the Geological Society of America's annual conference to fellow earth scientists ...

Study raises concern about ability of tests to predict fertility

2010-10-27
CHAPEL HILL – The method used to assess infertility in at-home tests might not be the best for identifying which women will have trouble getting pregnant, according to new research from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine. The study found that the cutoffs used by such infertility tests, which measure levels of a molecule called follicle stimulating hormone or FSH, label many women as infertile who actually go on to have children naturally. It also suggests that another hormone, called antimullerian hormone or AMH, could prove to be a much ...

Breakthrough in understanding life-threatening childhood liver disease

2010-10-27
Researchers at the University of Colorado School of Medicine and The Children's Hospital have taken a big step toward understanding what causes one of the most serious liver diseases in infants. The disease is called biliary atresia, It blocks the bile ducts in young infants, through which bile, crucial for digestion, flows to the small intestine. The disease is rare – it strikes in about one in 10,000 births. But it's life-threatening. "It is fatal if not treated quickly," says Cara Mack, MD, who led the CU research. Surgical removal of the blocked main bile duct ...

Breaching the breech protocol

2010-10-27
Most babies are delivered head-first, but in about 4% of all deliveries babies are "born breech" ― with their buttocks or feet first. Doctors usually exercise caution and use caesarean sections (C-sections) as the delivery method of choice for such births, believing it safer for the baby. After a large-scale international study in 2000, C-sections became the near-universal choice for such births. But now researchers at Tel Aviv University are saying that, under certain circumstances, traditional vaginal delivery for breech babies is not only safe for baby, but even ...

6 new isotopes of the superheavy elements discovered

2010-10-27
Berkeley, CA—A team of scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory has detected six isotopes, never seen before, of the superheavy elements 104 through 114. Starting with the creation of a new isotope of the yet-to-be-named element 114, the researchers observed successive emissions of alpha particles that yielded new isotopes of copernicium (element 112), darmstadtium (element 110), hassium (element 108), seaborgium (element 106), and rutherfordium (element 104). Rutherfordium ended the chain when it decayed by spontaneous fission. ...

Haptoglobin as an early serum biomarker of virus-induced type 1 diabetes in rats

2010-10-27
Type 1 diabetes (T1D), formerly known as juvenile diabetes, is a multifactorial disease of complex etiology characterized by the autoimmune destruction of pancreatic beta cells. In addition to genetic susceptibility, it is generally accepted that environmental factors play important roles in triggering disease, with virus infection having perhaps the strongest association. Multiple viral infections including cytomegalovirus, mumps, rubella, enteroviruses, and parvovirus have all been associated with human T1D. Indeed, the effects of diverse viruses in triggering T1D may ...

USDA scientists helping keep in-demand smoked salmon safe to eat

2010-10-27
Scientists with the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) are helping ensure that the smoked salmon that's always a hit at festive gatherings also is always safe to eat, including among their achievements the development of a first-of-its-kind mathematical model that food processors and others can use to select the optimal combination of temperature and concentrations of salt and smoke compounds to reduce or eliminate microbial contamination of the product. The studies are led by food technologist Andy (Cheng-An) Hwang with the USDA Agricultural Research Service's (ARS) ...

Halloween horror story -- tale of the headless dragonfly

2010-10-27
CORVALLIS, Ore. – In a short, violent battle that could have happened somewhere this afternoon, the lizard made a fast lunge at the dragonfly, bit its head off and turned to run away. Lunch was served. But the battle didn't happen today, it happened about 100 million years ago, probably with dinosaurs strolling nearby. And the lizard didn't get away, it was trapped in the same oozing, sticky tree sap that also entombed the now-headless dragonfly for perpetuity. This ancient struggle, preserved in the miracle of amber, was just described by researchers from Oregon State ...

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:

Final data and undiscovered images from NASA’s NEOWISE

Nucleoporin93: A silent protector in vascular health

Can we avert the looming food crisis of climate change?

Alcohol use and antiobesity medication treatment

Study reveals cause of common cancer immunotherapy side effect

New era in amphibian biology

Harbor service, VAST Data provide boost for NCSA systems

New prognostic model enhances survival prediction in liver failure

China focuses on improving air quality via the coordinated control of fine particles and ozone

Machine learning reveals behaviors linked with early Alzheimer’s, points to new treatments

Novel gene therapy trial for sickle cell disease launches

Engineering hypoallergenic cats

Microwave-induced pyrolysis: A promising solution for recycling electric cables

Cooling with light: Exploring optical cooling in semiconductor quantum dots

Breakthrough in clean energy: Scientists pioneer novel heat-to-electricity conversion

Study finds opposing effects of short-term and continuous noise on western bluebird parental care

Quantifying disease impact and overcoming practical treatment barriers for primary progressive aphasia

Sports betting and financial market data show how people misinterpret new information in predictable ways

Long COVID brain fog linked to lung function

Concussions slow brain activity of high school football players

Study details how cancer cells fend off starvation and death from chemotherapy

Transformation of UN SDGs only way forward for sustainable development 

New study reveals genetic drivers of early onset type 2 diabetes in South Asians 

Delay and pay: Tipping point costs quadruple after waiting

Magnetic tornado is stirring up the haze at Jupiter's poles

Cancers grow uniformly throughout their mass

Researchers show complex relationship between Arctic warming and Arctic dust

Brain test shows that crabs process pain

Social fish with low status are so stressed out it impacts their brains

Predicting the weather: New meteorology estimation method aids building efficiency

[Press-News.org] New entitlement program not a replacement for long-term care insurance