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Medicaid Expanding Test on Long-Term Care Education
CMS seeking more states to join demonstration project
that began in January
July 27, 2005 – The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid
Services (CMS) is seeking five to ten states to help expand their
demonstration project aimed at helping inform citizens about how to plan
for long-term care. The ultimate goal is to help in controlling costs in
the Medicaid program.
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Medicaid, the federal/state program that provides
health care to the nation’s low-income elderly, disabled and children,
pays nearly half of the nation’s long-term care expenses. It is second
only to private resources as the source of payment for nursing home and
other forms of long-term care, with Medicaid paying 46 percent of the
nation’s total nursing home bill of approximately $111 billion in 2003.
Medicare has only a limited nursing home benefit of 100 days following a
three-day prior hospitalization.
Even those who start out a nursing home stay with
private resources often exhaust those funds quickly and turn to Medicaid
for help if they haven’t actively planned ahead for other ways to
finance the care they need, Administrator Mark B. McClellan said.
He said the agency wants more states to join in the
second phase of this demonstration project to test the most efficient
ways to communicate the need for advance planning for the prospect of an
illness or other infirmity as one ages. The first phase began in January
2005 and involved five states.
“There are more options available for quality
long-term care than ever before, and more Americans will need it at some
point in their lives than ever before. Planning for how to get the
support you and your loved ones may need in retirement is an essential
part of planning for retirement – we all need to think about it,” Dr.
McClellan said. “Medicare doesn’t cover long-term care, and Medicaid
cannot afford to be the nation’s primary source of payment for its
nursing home bills.”
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In the first phase of the pilot, CMS, together with
other HHS components, joined with state governors in an aggressive
outreach campaign to residents. Each state governor sent letters to
households with members aged of 50-70 encouraging them to plan for aging
needs. States offered a long-term care planning toolkit which featured
information about the Medicare and Medicaid benefit packages, ways to
plan ahead, legal issues to consider, and how to assess private
financing options.
Early reviews of the pilot, which ended in May
2005, show an overall good response rate in the campaign states. The
other long-term care financing options that were promoted in the
campaign included personal savings, trusts, annuities, long-term care
insurance, and reverse mortgages. The five participating states were:
Arkansas , Idaho , New Jersey , Nevada and Virginia .
States responding to today’s announcement will be
chosen competitively. CMS will contribute $2.5 million to the campaign
and its evaluation. States will pay the cost of printing and mailing
the governor’s letter. Approximately five million households will
receive letters about planning for long-term care. Phase II of the
campaign will run between January through May 2006.
“The campaign is a good start toward greater
retirement security, and we will keep building on it,” said Dr.
McClellan. “We are supporting better options for financing long-term
care, meaningful incentives that make planning attractive and increased
awareness about what public programs pay and what Americans should plan
to pay themselves.”
Copies of the announcement may be found at
http://www.grants.gov. Electronic copies can be found at
http://www.ltcaware.infoor from the address below.
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