One State’s Big Leap to Close Medicare and Medicaid Gaps

Jul. 1--More than 15 percent of Americans have already reached the age of 65, and by 2030 that number will have risen to one in five as the last of the baby boomers reach retirement age. Despite these numbers, insurance options to cover the long-term health-care needs that many aging Americans will need are elusive. While Medicare pays for medical services in a nursing facility, it covers the cost of the stay itself only for short stints. And Medicaid typically covers long-term care only for those Americans with virtually no assets.

It's an issue that state legislatures are continually revisiting, but overall there's been little progress toward meeting the full health-care costs of the elderly. This year, however, the state of Washington passed legislation that will go further than any other state in closing coverage gaps for a large proportion of its residents.

The program will be funded by a wage tax of about 0.6 percent, which kicks in in 2022. Beginning in 2025, the state will offer a maximum lifetime benefit of $36,500 for a person to use for long-term care needs, with the benefit indexed to rise annually with inflation. The coverage isn't universal: To use the money -- up to $100 a day -- a resident will need to have worked and paid into the program for at least three years in the past six or for a total of 10 years with five years of uninterrupted work. In addition to the standard stay in a nursing home, the benefit will cover items such as installing wheelchair ramps at home and providing services such as those offered at an assisted living facility or by in-home care.

A challenge for the state will be to make sure that as residents' paychecks reflect the new wage tax, they understand where their money is going. "We need a backstock of resources, and that's what this does," says Jason McGill, health policy adviser to Gov. Jay Inslee. "They might not know what they're paying into, and it's our next step to communicate what that is and why it's important."

While Washington's approach is broader than most, advocates say there are plenty of other ways to chip away at the unaffordability of health care for the elderly. "It's not one thing or the other. It's a series of policy changes that will change the landscape," says Elaine Ryan, vice president for state advocacy and strategy integration at AARP.

Ryan lists helping with caregiver expenses as a good place to start, given that the average out-of-pocket cost for a caregiver is $7,000 a year. Hawaii took such a step in 2017 with legislation providing $70 a day for up to a year for caregiver expenses. A couple of other states are weighing tax credits for caregiving costs, and a bipartisan federal bill taking that approach is pending.

Another step that would lessen the burden of long-term health care costs would be to implement more flexible sick-leave policies that would make it easier for employees to care for aging relatives. "It's hard to believe you don't have that for anything other than your own health," says Ryan.

Whatever approaches a state considers must be framed around the need for options across the continuum of a person's life, in Ryan's view. "We need these systems to be more contemporary," she says. "That's why when we communicate the need for these policies at the state level, we refer to them as a whole-family caregiving journey."

Mattie Quinn -- Staff Writer -- [email protected] -- @mattiekquinn

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