Friday, June 24, 2005
Individual responsibility and long-term care
[Rowland Nethaway, "Beating Medicaid system," The Waco Tribune-Herald, 22 June 2005.]
The government needs to provide long-term care coverage because grandma didn't buy insurance? As John Stossel would say, "Give me a break."
Medicare doesn’t pay for long term health care for seniors who need assistance in their homes or in nursing homes.
The cost of long-term health insurance policies are beyond the reach of many seniors, especially those who did not purchase these policies when they were younger and healthier.
Because of rising health-care costs that the government is unwilling to control, Medicare recipients are routinely seeing double-digit increases on their monthly premiums that far exceed annual inflation and even their annual cost-of-living increases in their Social Security checks.
The dilemma that confronts many families is whether to wait until their parents or grandparents spend themselves into poverty with high health-care bills or whether to retain some family assets by purposefully impoverishing their elderly relatives.
More and more American families are finding ways to beat the system. Even in those cases where this sort of "Medicaid planning" is legal, there remains the question as to whether they are ethical.
First of all, there are ways to pay for long-term care coverage. Why should someone get a free ride because they "forgot" to look into policies before they needed care? That concept certainly doesn't fly when people get into auto accidents.
Even if coverage wasn't purchased long ago, there are still means. Most seniors own their own homes. This asset should be utilized to pay for care, and can be through tools such as reverse mortgages. Again, why should taxpayers have to pick up the tab for long-term care just so that someone can leave cash to their heirs?
Finally, the rise in health care costs is a problem, but it is exactly by transferring financial responsibility for these issues that we have gotten to such a point of rising costs. The answer is definitely not to encourage abuse and then somehow artifically "cap" costs by government mandate and pretend the problem is solved. Only by restoring the role of the consumer in health care can costs ever truly be contained.
[Stephen Moses, "Nursing home system in need of reform," The Pittsburg Morning Sun, 22 May 2005.]
[Rowland Nethaway, "Beating Medicaid system," The Waco Tribune-Herald, 22 June 2005.]
The government needs to provide long-term care coverage because grandma didn't buy insurance? As John Stossel would say, "Give me a break."
Medicare doesn’t pay for long term health care for seniors who need assistance in their homes or in nursing homes.
The cost of long-term health insurance policies are beyond the reach of many seniors, especially those who did not purchase these policies when they were younger and healthier.
Because of rising health-care costs that the government is unwilling to control, Medicare recipients are routinely seeing double-digit increases on their monthly premiums that far exceed annual inflation and even their annual cost-of-living increases in their Social Security checks.
The dilemma that confronts many families is whether to wait until their parents or grandparents spend themselves into poverty with high health-care bills or whether to retain some family assets by purposefully impoverishing their elderly relatives.
More and more American families are finding ways to beat the system. Even in those cases where this sort of "Medicaid planning" is legal, there remains the question as to whether they are ethical.
First of all, there are ways to pay for long-term care coverage. Why should someone get a free ride because they "forgot" to look into policies before they needed care? That concept certainly doesn't fly when people get into auto accidents.
Even if coverage wasn't purchased long ago, there are still means. Most seniors own their own homes. This asset should be utilized to pay for care, and can be through tools such as reverse mortgages. Again, why should taxpayers have to pick up the tab for long-term care just so that someone can leave cash to their heirs?
Finally, the rise in health care costs is a problem, but it is exactly by transferring financial responsibility for these issues that we have gotten to such a point of rising costs. The answer is definitely not to encourage abuse and then somehow artifically "cap" costs by government mandate and pretend the problem is solved. Only by restoring the role of the consumer in health care can costs ever truly be contained.
[Stephen Moses, "Nursing home system in need of reform," The Pittsburg Morning Sun, 22 May 2005.]
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