Look into options for long-term care

Frank Keating, Washington, D.C. The author, a former governor of Oklahoma, is president of the American Council of Life Insurers.

Friday, Aug. 7, 2009 | 2:03 a.m.

Regarding Sunday’s editorial “Addressing long-term care,” support for the Community Living Assistance Services and Support Act is misplaced. The CLASS Act is a poorly structured program that will not solve the problem of high long-term care costs.

An independent actuarial analysis concluded that the act was unlikely to cover more than a small percentage of Americans and could be insolvent as early as 2022.

For Americans planning their financial futures, the CLASS Act is likely to lead to a false sense of security. Many Americans will not appropriately plan for their long-term care needs thinking they are covered by the program’s $50 daily benefit. In reality, this would only cover a fraction of costs that could exceed $1,100 a day.

Another shortcoming of the CLASS Act is that premiums, which would be taken out of workers’ paychecks, would rise annually to keep the program solvent. Any insurance company seeking approval from the Nevada Insurance Department for a policy with annual premium hikes would be laughed out of the office.

We agree that it is time for policymakers to address the problem of long-term care. Indeed, we have proposed three reasonable and cost-effective measures to help give seniors real protection from the financial effects of prolonged illness or disability. These include increased funding for the federal National Clearinghouse for Long-Term Care that promotes awareness of long-term care needs, expanding the Long-Term Care Partnership Program (which Nevada and 25 other states have adopted) and allowing citizens to purchase long-term care insurance with pretax dollars. This package would do a lot more for those needing long-term care than another inadequate, overpriced federal government program.