Senator: State facing crisis in care

Friday, March 10, 2000 | 12:37 p.m.

A key member of a legislative subcommittee studying long-term care in Nevada said the state could go bankrupt within a decade unless a solution is found to the high cost.

The subcommittee met for the third time Thursday at the Sawyer State Office Building.

"Long-term care is going to bankrupt the state in 10 years if we don't do something about it," Sen. Ray Rawson, R-Las Vegas, one of the Legislature's authorities on health care, said after Thursday's meeting.

Failing any other solution besides bankruptcy, Rawson said the increasing need for long-term care will put the state in the position of having to either raise taxes or tap into funds now going elsewhere, such as education.

The subcommittee began studying the long-term care issue after two Senate bills on the topic were rejected by the 1999 Legislature.

Senate Bill 446, introduced by the Legislative Commission on Health Care, would have provided long-term care insurance to public employees and retired public employees, but costs were considered too high.

Rawson said, however, that long-term insurance is a big enough issue for public employees that passage of a bill is inevitable. If the public employees insurance bill does not pass in the Legislature's 2001 session, it will pass in 2003, Rawson predicted.

Jan Marie Reed, executive officer of the Public Employees Benefits Program, said long-term care is the largest unfunded liability facing Americans. Comparing the chances of needing various insurance coverages, she said that there is a one-in-88 chance of using home insurance, a one-in-45 chance of using car insurance and a one-in-four chance of using long-term care insurance.

Senate Bill 370 would have used tobacco settlement funds to establish a long-term care insurance program for low-income elderly residents. Even though the bill was killed, Rawson said some of the tobacco funds are indeed destined for such long-term care.

Rawson said the subcommittee believes that people should be encouraged to provide long-term insurance coverage on their own.

"One way is to stimulate people to buy it for themselves," Rawson said. "It's just beginning to be a market. Every generation until now you've taken care of your parents. We can't do that now."

The subcommittee is reviewing alternatives to placing people in institutions for long-term care. An example discussed Thursday would be expanding the Community Home-Based Initiatives Program, or CHIP, which provides day care and assistance.