LongTerm Care The Cost Challenge That
Scares the Government Most
By Eric Pianin March 13, 2016 The Fiscal Times
For years, federal
and state governments have shied away from the problem of providing long-term
care for ailing seniors and for good reason.
While mounting
costs of Social Security, prescription drugs and federal health care programs
get a lot of attention, the staggering costs of providing community based
social services and nursing home facilities and in-home care to seniors are
draining the savings of average Americans and posing frightening long-term
fiscal challenges for government officials.
Responsibility for
long-term service support is shared among seniors and people with disabilities
themselves, family, friends, and volunteer care-givers; communities, state, and
federal government, Alice Rivlin, the former Congressional Budget Office
Director and an expert on longterm elder care, testified recently before a
House committee. This shared responsibility system is severely stressed, and
will become increasingly unable to cope as the numbers needing care increase.
Moreover, the
rapid growth in this spending is forcing policy makers to make tough budget
choices between Medicaid and other spending for the elderly and education and
other investments in young people, Rivlin added.
Any way you look
at it, the budgetary challenges are daunting:
About 12 million
older Americans are currently in need of long-term services and support and
about 70 percent of people 65 and older will need the intense care at some
point in their lives, according to studies. Many of these people have trouble
performing routine activities on a daily basis, such as bathing and dressing,
managing their medication and cleaning their homes, apartments or assisted living
quarters.
In 2014, for
instance, the average annual cost for a home health aide was about $45,800,
according to a study by the Bipartisan
Policy Center.
The cost for community-based adult day-care centers was on average $16,900 per
year. And the average annual cost to live in a nursing facility was roughly
$87,600.
The year before,
the nation spent about $310 billion to compensate long-term care providers,
with Medicaid providing about $123 billion of that total.
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