Recently in Kaisar Health News, a contributor from the Urban Institute wrote a piece suggesting that government-run long-term care insurance be made mandatory in the CLASS-Act circulating the Senate now. That’s right. Gleckman’s proposal is to require every American to buy long-term care insurance.
Keep in mind that the Urban Institute gets 62% of its funding from the federal government. So what is being said starts to make sense; this is big government trying to take over yet another area of our lives. While we’d be remiss to say that LTC insurance is not important, we strongly believe it should be a personal decision. For example, families with a net worth over, say, $5 million, would be better off to self-insure against any losses in many cases. And for many, being able to customize benefits is very useful. In no proposal does the government plan offer many of the features found in private long-term care insurance.
For now, we can wait and see. What will most likely happen is a more benign version of the CLASS-Act where participation is automatic, but voluntary. Once millions of Americans realize they are paying premiums to a government long-term care insurance program from payroll taxes, we do expect sales on the private market to take off. And that is a good thing for all involved.
