By John Ballard
I heard a talk radio host yesterday crowing about Friday's announcement that the long-term care portion of Obamacare known as the CLASS Act has been abandoned, Although this is very old news he was spinning bullshit into cotton citing this development as further evidence of the failure of healthcare reform.
Previous posts have described one of Ted Kennedy's legislative efforts but from soon after the bill passed the idea proved to be actuarially unworkable. At this point the less said the better. But the challenge of how best to care for a growing population of aging and otherwise disabled Americans remains one of the country's numerous crippling social problems.
Naomi Freundlich (writing at Maggie Mahar's place) sez...
The problem of paying for long-term care has not gone away. Anyone cheering the demise of CLASS and claiming a victory for the anti-reform (and anti-Obama) side is deluded; this issue has no �side� and we�ve merely punted it further down the road. We are all going to get old. The vast majority of us will require long-term care services in the future and most will require government or other outside help to pay for it. The silence from the right is deafening.
"... The silence from the right is deafening." It's a feature they share with vultures until it's time to pick over the bones.
ReplyDeleteHi John,
ReplyDeleteJust wanted to give you the heads-up that I wrote the HealthBeat article about the demise of the CLASS Act, not Maggie. Also, if you want more information about Medicaid managed care plans, there is a Medicaid Commission (similar to MEDPAC)that published a report recently on managed care in the program. You can access the report here http://www.macpac.gov/reports.
Thanks,
Naomi Freundlich
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Forgive me, Naomi. Careless oversight. Now fixed.
You do good work, by the way.
JB