Long-Term Care
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Long-term care can be defined as a broad set of paid and unpaid services for people who are mentally or physically disabled, or whose chronic illness places them in need of medical or personal assistance for long periods of time. “It is estimated that there are more than twelve million Americans of all ages whose mix of serious disability and chronic illness places them at the high risk for functional decline, hospitalization, or nursing home placement.” (Benjamin) Several different populations require long-term care services, and the needs of these populations vary. In addition to the elderly, many of the long-term care users are younger persons with physical disabilities; persons with developmental disabilities; and persons with chronic diseases such as diabetes, emphysema, and AIDS.
The increasing need for these services is creating significant budget concerns for Federal and State Governments, as well as straining family finances. Combined Medicare and Medicaid outlays have been growing dramatically. About 40 percent of long-term care costs’ are paid by the Federal/State Medicaid program. (Feder, Komisar, and Niefeld) Although the Medicare program accounts for only a small share of total expenditures, its share has been growing. Despite rising Government expenditures, out-of-pocket payments continue to be a large source of financing for long-term care. As a result, for many individuals who have chronic care needs, long-term care remains a catastrophic cost.
Contemporarily, long-term care has become a topic of focus in the U.S. for several reasons. The clearest reason for its emergence is that people live longer than they used to. The population swell after the World Wars, the “baby-boom era,” along with a higher average life expectancy, thanks to advancements in modern medicine, have created a population of elderly people much larger than what the current system can now handle. Current numbers show substantial growth from the eighties, and estimates suggest that the demand for long term care among the elderly will more than double in the next thirty years. (Feder, Komisar, and Niefeld) This growth will exacerbate concerns about balancing institutional and noninstitutional care, assuring quality of care, and most importantly adopting and sustaining financing mechanisms that equitably and adequately protect the elderly who need long-term care.
Medicare, the federal governments health insurance program, finances acute medical care for nearly all elderly Americans over the age of sixty-five. However, very few long-term care services are covered. Medicare finances long-term care only partially through it’s limited skilled nursing facility (SNF) and home health benefits. “Despite recent growth in spending on these benefits, much of the SNF and home-care paid for by Medicare remains short-term rehabilitative care, often related to a hospital stay or outpatient procedure....
