LeadingAge played a key role in having the CLASS Act included in federal healthcare reform legislation. The organization now finds itself defending the insurance program amid growing demands for its renovation or repeal.
At press time, LeadingAge was mobilizing troops to ensure lawmakers hear about the measure’s positive aspects. The group is also talking up the measure’s benefits whenever possible.
“The CLASS program creates a consumer-financed, premium-based, voluntary insurance plan to help people finance whatever long-term services and supports they come to need,” said Larry Minnix, the organization’s president and CEO. He spoke in March at a House Energy and Commerce Committee subcommittee hearing.
But others—particularly Republicans who smell an unfunded mandate—are less enthusiastic about the government’s new long-term care insurance program, which ensures at least $50 a day to eligible recipients.
In February, Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said that tweaks should be coming. “It would be irresponsible to ignore the concerns about the CLASS program’s long-term sustainability in its current form, and we haven’t done that,” Sebelius said.
See interview at left for more.
From the April 01, 2011 Issue of McKnight's Long-Term Care News
