Sec. 2. Findings; purpose

408 words·~2 min read·/bill/117/hr/4289/ih/section-2

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Congress finds the following: More than half of Americans entering old age today will have a long-term need for constant attendance by another person, averaging $298,000 costs per person for about 2 years of serious self-care disability (as defined in HIPAA), and more than half will be out-of-pocket, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). The AARP report that the population age 85 or older is set to double between 2015 and 2032, and triple by 2050.

This aging will outpace the number of working-age family members who can help seniors financially or with unpaid care. Research has shown that the typical U.S. senior could afford only about 12 months of nursing home care, assisted living care, or extensive home care using their financial wealth. Some can get by using unpaid (family) care, but most rely on a combination of paid and unpaid care. More than 1 in 5 middle-income seniors will end up impoverished, Medicaid eligible, and using Medicaid to cover their long-term services and supports

(LTSS)costs, according to Altarum analysis of HHS projections. Millions of older Americans—1 in 5—will need LTSS for more than 5 years, with a price tag that would impoverish nearly all American households if they faced that need. HHS projections show that older adults who need LTSS for more than 5 years incur nearly half of all LTSS expenses and 60 percent of Medicaid’s LTSS spending. An older adult with high LTSS needs is about 50 percent more likely to enter Medicaid when compared to seniors with similar finances earlier in life. Long-term care insurance

(LTCI)is rarely available, and premiums have pushed plan-holders to drop out. Only 6 percent of seniors had any private coverage for LTSS expenses in 2018, leaving almost all middle-class American families to exhaust their nest-eggs and become impoverished before qualifying for Medicaid. The nation urgently needs to create methods for ordinary Americans to be able to take responsibility for planning for the risk of a substantial period of disability during retirement years. Those methods must also responsibly support the workforce providing supports and services. The purpose of this Act is to enable most Americans to make plans that protect themselves and their families, to enable disabled older adults to support themselves in their communities during periods of serious disability, to support the workforce providing direct services to elders living with disabilities, and to reduce what is now necessary reliance on Medicaid.