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Adding Long-Term Care Benefit to Medicare Is Best Way to Ensure Affordability for Families, Say Health Care Opinion Leaders |
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From The Commonwealth Fund: Nearly four of five (79%) respondents favor or strongly favor adding a long-term care benefit to Medicare, financed by a premium, to pay for care. More than two-thirds (69%) of respondents to the survey believe it is very important (41%) or important (28%) that the health reform plans of the presidential candidates address the quality and financing of long-term care. "As our population ages, health care opinion leaders are sounding the alarm about the significant challenges we will face financing and improving the quality of long-term care," said Commonwealth Fund President Karen Davis. A majority of health care opinion leaders say that long-term care costs should be shared by individuals and the government (55%), while one-quarter (26%) say costs should be shared by individuals, employers, and the government. Three-quarters (76%) of opinion leaders say it is urgent or very urgent to develop a sufficient supply of home- and community-based services; 67 percent say it is urgent to create and disseminate adequate information on long-term care facilities to better educate consumers and families about available options. A majority of opinion leaders (66%) are at least somewhat familiar with the culture change movement in long-term care, which is working to make resident, or person-centered care the norm and the nursing home less institutional and more home-like in order to preserve residents' rights to make decisions affecting their daily lives. Commentaries on the survey results by Nora Dowd Eisenhower, secretary of the Pennsylvania Department of Aging, and Carol Raphael, president and chief executive officer of Visiting Nurse Service of New York, appear in the July 21 issue of Modern Healthcare.
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