Press Releases

CMS LAUNCHES SECOND PHASE OF CONSUMER EDUCATION ON LONG-TERM CARE

To help alleviate rapidly escalating costs in the Medicaid program, and to help consumers have more control over their own long-term care decisions, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Administrator Mark B. McClellan, M.D., Ph.D., today announced new efforts to help Americans plan ahead for their long-term care needs.

McClellan said the agency is looking for    five to 10 states to join in the second phase of a   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.”

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, McClellan said.

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. 

LTC Awareness Campaign: Phase II Application

U.S.  Department of Health and Human Services

Hubert  H. Humphrey Building : Room 424E

200 Independence Avenue, SW

Washington  , DC , 20201