Disability and Aged Care Insurance for the long term

Included in both the House and Senate version of the health care reform bill is, the Community Living Assistance Services and Supports ACT, or CLASS ACT. The aim of the CLASS Act is to create a public long-term care insurance program that would be funded through a payroll deduction for workers over age 18.

How long term is "long-term"? Well the aim of the Act seeks to give assistance to the Medicare and the Medicaid systems currently in place. However, with 78 million estimated baby-boomers about to hit the system, would employers be willing to fund the plan given their employees won't be eligible for some time?

Competing for long-term care | Insurance.us

In Georgia, home and community-based services are administered through Medicaid, which in 2009 directed 44 percent of its long-term care funding in Georgia to such services.

The average cost of in-home services is $8,550 a year, compared to average of more than $26,000 for nursing home residency, said Carolyn Harden, coordinator Area Agency on Aging’s community care service program, for the 15-county Northwest Georgia region.

According to the National Bureau of Economic Research only 10% of elderly people have any kind of long-term insurance plan. Given that we tend to use health care more as we age and as disabilities we may have managed become more debilitating the effects on the health care system and the insurance industry IS going to be stretched. But is funding from the young and the employers of the young, fit and healthy the way to go? Time will tell on that one.