Do I Need Long-Term Care Insurance? And Future Trends with Marc A. Cohen PhD
Long-term care is care across a range of settings and can include medical and non-medical services that assist individuals who cannot care for themselves for extended periods. Also, long-term care is often provided at a person's home, largely by family and friends.
Thus, it's a challenge to discern whether you even need long-term care insurance coverage. If you can afford this type of policy, it's even harder to know if the insurer and the policy will still be there with adequate coverage whenever you need it.
In this episode of This Is Getting Old, Marc A. Cohen, PhD., will talk about the basics of how long-term care is paid for now - and discuss future trends for the long-term care insurance industry.
Part One of “Do I Need Long-Term Care Insurance? And Future Trends”
How Is Long-term Care Currently Financed?
Long Term Services and Supports (LTSS) are services designed to help people with functional incapacities, limitations, or cognitive issues. These circumstances limit a person’s ability to perform basic activities of daily living like bathing, dressing, toileting; all the things that one would need to be able to do in order to live independently.
Unlike acute medical care, with services like hospital care, physician care tends to focus on curing people of specific ailments; long-term services and supports are designed to help people living with chronic illnesses maintain their function or reduce the decline in functioning over time.
In today’s market, long-term care is financed in three major ways:
✅ Out-of-pocket: Disabled older adults and their families pay out-of-pocket for care.
✅ Medicaid: A federal-state social safety net program. Older adults must qualify for Medicaid by meeting very low income and asset thresholds.
✅ and private long-term care insurance.
Is Private Long-term Care Insurance Still And/Or Going To Continue A Valuable Product For Consumers?
The long-term care financing problem in the United States is enormous. People over age 65 today, around twenty-five million of them will require long-term care services and supports projected to cost trillions of dollars; including family support provided care, which is not often evaluated.
Given these circumstances, we need to have more financial resources flowing into this system. The problem is so big that no one sector can handle it on its own. That means that we can't fully publicly finance long-term care —and we've already proven that it can't be a privately owned, privately funded solution. Therefore, we need roles for the public and private sector in order to find a viable solution.
About Marc A. Cohen PhD
Marc A. Cohen, Ph.D. is a Professor of Gerontology at UMass Boston and the Co-Director of the LeadingAge LTSS Center @UMass Boston. He is also a Research Director at the Center for Consumer Engagement in Health Innovation at Community Catalyst. Before joining UMass in 2016, Dr. Cohen founded and led LifePlans, Inc., a long-term services and support (LTSS) research and risk management company.
Connect With Dr. Marc A. Cohen through the following social media platforms:
Twitter: @UMassBoston @LeadingAge @CCEHI @CommCatHealth
Facebook: @UMassBoston @communitycatalyst @LeadingAge
Instagram: @UMassBoston @LeadingAge
For more valuable resources, check out the episode of Elder Care: Past and Future with Joanne Lynn, MD, MA, MS, and Carrie Graham, PhD, MGS.
Watch the full episode here: [ Ссылка ]
About Melissa Batchelor, PhD, RN, FNP, FGSA, FAAN:
I earned my Bachelor of Science in Nursing ('96) and Master of Science in Nursing ('00) as a Family Nurse Practitioner (FNP) from the University of North Carolina Wilmington (UNCW) School of Nursing (SON). I genuinely enjoy working with the complex medical needs of older adults. I worked full-time for five years as an FNP in geriatric primary care across many long-term care settings (skilled nursing homes, assisted living, home, and office visits), then transitioned into academic nursing in 2005, joining the faculty at UNCW SON lecturer. I obtained my Ph.D. in Nursing and a post-master's Certificate in Nursing Education from the Medical University of South Carolina College of Nursing ('11). I then joined the faculty at Duke University School of Nursing as an Assistant Professor. My family moved to northern Virginia in 2015 and led to me joining the George Washington University (GW) School of Nursing faculty in 2018 as a (tenured) Associate Professor. I am also the Director of the GW Center for Aging, Health, and Humanities. Please find out more about her work at [ Ссылка ].
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