US Pulls plug on Long Term Care portion of health care reformct ("CLASS Act")
One part of the "Affordable Care" act included available government insurance for long term care. It looks like this isn't going to happen.
US Pulls Plug on LTC Act
When the CBO crunched the numbers for the Affordable Care act, the premiums to be paid for this LTC insurance (but which wouldn't be used to pay for actual LTC for many years) were used to offset current costs of other parts of the program, and helped show a lower near-term cost for the law than would have been the case otherwise. I don't know if we'll be seeing a recalculation of these costs now--CBO has already revised the figures upward several times for other reasons.
At the time the legislation was proposed, many analysts cast doubt on the long-term affordability of the LTC component. Today's announcement by HHS may be related to those earlier-expressed concerns. I'm not sure exactly how HHS will simply "not implement" something that is required by legislation which has been passed, but we'll see.
Anyway, this certainly will be of interest to many ER folks grappling with the cost of LTCi and LTC itself.
One part of the "Affordable Care" act included available government insurance for long term care. It looks like this isn't going to happen.
US Pulls Plug on LTC Act
When the CBO crunched the numbers for the Affordable Care act, the premiums to be paid for this LTC insurance (but which wouldn't be used to pay for actual LTC for many years) were used to offset current costs of other parts of the program, and helped show a lower near-term cost for the law than would have been the case otherwise. I don't know if we'll be seeing a recalculation of these costs now--CBO has already revised the figures upward several times for other reasons.
At the time the legislation was proposed, many analysts cast doubt on the long-term affordability of the LTC component. Today's announcement by HHS may be related to those earlier-expressed concerns. I'm not sure exactly how HHS will simply "not implement" something that is required by legislation which has been passed, but we'll see.
Anyway, this certainly will be of interest to many ER folks grappling with the cost of LTCi and LTC itself.
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