Financing Long-Term Care: Options for Policy

Walter M. Cadette
Additional contact information
Walter M. Cadette: The Jerome Levy Economics Institute

Macroeconomics from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: The nation is ill-prepared to finance the quantum jump in long-term care spending that is on its way as the baby boom ages. By default rather than by design, Medicaid has become the main source of funds for long- term care. But reliance on Medicaid has fostered the institutionalization of the disabled elderly, has given rise to a two- tier care system, and has yielded the bizarre outcome of use of limited welfare funds by middle- and even high-income Americans who have succeeded in sheltering assets from Medicaid's spend-down requirements. Insurance would be a greatly better answer to the nation's long-term care needs. But the market will remain small and underdeveloped as long as Americans can make easy claim on Medicaid. The paper puts forth a plan for universal long-term care insurance, supported by income-scaled tax credits, to replace Medicaid in its current role. That would make for "honest government"—one that not only does not fund inheritance protection but also genuinely protects those with greatest need.

JEL-codes: E (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 34 pages
Date: 2000-10-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea
Note: Type of Document - Adobe Acrobat PDF; prepared on IBM PC; to print on PostScript; pages: 34; figures: included
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://econwpa.ub.uni-muenchen.de/econ-wp/mac/papers/0004/0004030.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wpa:wuwpma:0004030

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Macroeconomics from University Library of Munich, Germany
Bibliographic data for series maintained by EconWPA ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).